The snow has melted, Eddie's is full of sunbathing students and the Fordham men's tennis team is in the win column. The Rams began their season on March 6 traveling to the Tenafly Racquet Club in Tenafly, N.J. and beating St. Thomas Aquinas in a close 5-4 match.
After a rather slow fall season in which Fordham picked up only three wins, the team found the win column in its first match of the 2010 spring season with a victory over the Division II school.
The match began looking grim for the Rams with their top doubles team of senior Dallas Harting and junior Austin Schoup losing in a tiebreak 7-5.
Fordham quickly rebounded though, as freshman John Thornhill and sophmore Eli Plangger picked up an 8-2 win, and junior Kevin Maloney and freshman Alex DeRienzo won 8-1.
"It's early in the season so we are still building chemistry," freshman Kei Usami said. "But these guys have definitely been growing together and have been playing some great doubles matches lately."
With Fordham taking two out of the three doubles matches, the Rams were poised to start the singles matches with momentum.
Unfortunately for the Rams, their singles matches started on the losing side.
No. 1 player Harting lost 7-5, 6-3, No. 2 Maloney, and No. 3 Schoup both lost in a tie-breaker.
With Fordham now down 4-2 with only three matches left, the Rams needed their final three players to all deliver wins if they wanted to squeak out the win.
Thornhill, in the No. 4 slot, No. 5 DeRienzo and No. 6 player junior Ken Fukumoto all blanked the Spartans players 6-0, 6-0 giving the Rams the 5-4 win.
"Alex, John and Ken are deceivingly good," Usami said. "When you play them they just keep wearing you down game by game until you have nothing left."
The Rams were streaky in the fall with their three wins coming consecutively in the middle of the season. They are a young team that can get a win on any day, and look to maintain focus and the toughness that they have shown in recent practices.
"Now that outdoor practices have started we can really start working hard," Usami said. "With all the guys on the team on the court we can start mixing things up and find some chemistry."
The Rams play again on March 22, when they will travel to Philadelphia where they will take on Temple University.
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