The Prairie View men’s tennis team competed in the strongest fall regional this weekend when they traveled down the road to College Station. The team played hard and fought to stay in each contest, but came up short in almost every match over the weekend.
The Wilson/International Tennis Association’s South Central Region competition was held on the campus of Texas A&M University with 13 schools competing for individual titles and recognition. The tournament included PVAMU and Texas A&M as well as teams from Baylor, Lamar, Louisiana-Lafayette, Rice, SMU, TCU, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, UT Arlington, and UT San Antonio. The competition was definitely fierce as the Panthers entered a tournament that welcomed 18 preseason nationally ranked singles players and nine double ranked doubles teams.
“This weekend’s championship should be very challenging, because it is such a strong region,” said Texas A&M head coach Steve Denton. The participants were very challenging, as the Panthers would realize throughout the weekend.
In the men’s singles competition, Prairie View placed five players in the brackets to compete against the nation’s best. Christopher Jordan started off the tournament against Brieuc Hamon of UT Arlington, losing the match 6-2, 6-0 and finishing up in the consolation bracket dropping a match to TCU’s Eric Olson 6-2, 6-4.
Veteran Jose Garcia also played some stiff competition losing his first match to James Wilson of Texas Tech 6-1, 6-2 while falling to Rodrigo Morgado of UT San Antonio 6-2, 6-0. Joshua Chavez also competed for the Panthers, coming out of the match a 6-2, 6-4 loser, but beating Devin Harley of Lamar 6-3, 6-1 in the consolation bracket. Chavez eventually dropped his next match 6-1, 6-1 to Rice’s Sam Garfoth-Bles.
Shariq Khan and Kudakwashe Nyatoti were the last two Panthers to represent the school, but they, too, came up short in both of their matches. Nyatoti may have played the best match for the Panthers as he took Baylor’s Julian Bley to a last game, but fell short 6-1, 6-7, 1-0.
In the doubles competition, teams consisting of Jordan and Chavez, and Garcia and Nyatoti competed to become Wilson/ITA South Central champion. Garcia and Nyatoti had a serious hill to climb as they faced the number one team in the nation in Texas A&M’s Austin Krajicek and Conor D. Pollock. Garcia and Nyatoti lost eight straight games to drop the match in the eight game pro-set format while Jordan and Chavez lost their first doubles match.
“I definitely don’t think the scores indicate it, but the guys played their butts off,” said Coach John Cochran. “Our opponents were just better, I mean it was like the difference between Southern and Prairie View to Texas and Texas Tech in football.”
The team is confident in its abilities, however, and believes it will be ready for the SWAC when the tennis season rolls around next spring.