This past weekend, the Linfield’s men tennis team headed out to Washington to play against Whitman College on Saturday and Whitworth on Sunday.
Whitman College are the defending champions and sits second in the conference standings, number four in regionals and number eleven nationally beat Linfield College 9-0.
In most of the matches, Whitman outstripped Linfield by a large margin. The closest match was doubles between senior Ben McNair and sophomore Nathan Saragoza against Whitman’s Robert Carter and Trevor Fennessy. The result ended up 9-7.
“We just needed to start stronger and faster we are not playing catch up the whole time,” McNair said.
But when going against Whitworth, it was a much closer match with the Pirates winning 5-4. Whitworth is ranked fourth in the conference.
It was a rocky battle between the two teams during the singles competition with neither side able to gain an upper hand. Going into the doubles competition, Linfield and Whitworth were evenly matched at 3-3.
McNair and Saragoza played in the first doubles match against Whitworth’s Jake Bethards and Thomas Remington. The Wildcats were able to come away with the win in that match with a score of 8-6.
We were serving well and putting balls in play. We both hit quality balls, so it’s taking time for Nathan and me to learn to trust one another” McNair said.
Unfortunately, this would not be enough as Whitman would go on to win the remaining two doubles matches 8-3 and 8-1.
Linfield is 0-2 in conference and 1-5 overall.
Next. the team plays Southwestern 11a.m. March 10 in McMinnville.