The Eastern men’s tennis team matched up against West Chester University on the afternoon of March 21, 2006.
While the bright shining sun popped out from behind the clouds, the men were led to the courts by their coach, David Storms. Eastern seemed ready to take this game home as their first victory, winning three singles matches, when darkness overcame the courts and the game was suspended.
The matches started out with Eastern’s doubles teams dominating the court. The men proved that they have what it takes when the doubles team of senior Jamie Berg and sophomore Jonathan Falcone won 9-7 after starting out down 7-2.
“Personally, I think I’m playing better than the first two matches of the season,” Berg said. “I’m finally getting the kinks out and my nerves are better. I’m feeling more comfortable on the court.”
The men played a hard set of matches, but they were close to victory when the match was suspended with first-year Taylor Kiser and Falcone still left to finish their singles matches.
The team has three singles wins at this point in the match: Berg (7-5, 6-1), junior Nathan Seifert (5-7, 6-4, 7-5), and sophomore Eric Walter (7-5, 6-3). It’s up to Kiser and Falcone to bring the team’s leading score of 3-2 to a win.
“In singles, I made mistakes, but as long as I am consistent and make less mistakes than my opponent I should come out with a victory,” a confident Kiser said.
First-year Joshua Riggs had his first game of the season. Even though he lost with a 0-8 score, he remains optimistic.
“I can’t feel too disappointed,” Riggs said. “After all, you have to go through certain struggles and learn from them. And for playing my first year in any tennis, I can only look forward to improving my game.”
“All in all it was a good day of tennis,” Kiser said.