Duck Diary #2
4/2/08
Hello Duck Fans!
I know it has been too long, but welcome back to my duck
diary. First of all, to start off, I’d like to make up for a crucial mistake I
made in my first entry, I failed to mention the new coaching staff we now have
since the last Duck Diary was written. Since Pick’s last diary, we have Nils
Schyllander and Bart Scott in their second year coaching the men’s team. Most
of you loyal fans will recognize Nils’ name since he was the women’s coach before making the switch,
and now the women are being coach by Paul Reber and Maja Kovacek.
HAWAI’I
Now
on to recap our recent activities: some weekends ago we were in Fresno to play Hawai’i and Fresno State. We arrived in Fresno fresh and ready to battle, especially after our last
two losses. And that’s exactly what our first match turned out to be, after
securing the doubles point with Stephen and Geoff clinching following Mikey and
Alex’s thrashing on court 2, it was on to singles.
Hawai’i boasts probably one of the best top three combos in
the country and edged our guys at those positions, luckily, Alex and I were
able to grit out our two matches, leaving the dual tied at three all. And who
was left to fight out the deciding match? None other than the Mr. Sweet Swede
himself, Mikey Myrhed. In typical Mikey fashion, he displayed some nailbiting
tennis and made us nervous as can be as we watched the two competitors
exchanging point for point. Finally at 5-3, Mikey had his first match points.
Following some intense shot making back and forth, Hawaii’s guy fought off both
match points. After coming so close we found ourselves watching Mikey serving
down 5-6, leaving us to wonder what we did to deserve such torture. But Mikey
came up with some clutch shots bringing it to a final set tiebreak to decide
which team would prevail that day. Mikey would grab the early lead in the
breaker only to see himself down match point 5-6 some few minutes later. I was
starting to believe at this point that this was going to defy every happy
ending Disney movie ever made. But my intuition was to be proven wrong as Mikey
clocked a huge forehand passing shot to stay in the match and keep our hopes
alive. Following another huge canon of a serve, Mikey arrived at his, what
seemed like, millionth match point, which concluded with a running backhand
passing shot followed by the classic triumphant double arm raise to celebrate
the victory, definitely making my personal top 10 list of best emotional
outbursts following a match clinching victory. Now on to highlight number 2 of
our trip....
CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE
Never
one to be out done, Marco Verdasco found himself at the center of attention a
short few hours later as we sat at the Cheesecake Factory. In case you missed
my first installment of my Duck Diary, I mentioned that Marco currently holds
the Duck record for fastest cheesecake eaten at the Cheesecake Factory, having
finished one in just a tad under one minute. The rules go like this: the clock
will start as soon as Marco picks up the first spoonful of his cheesecake and
will conclude once Marco has choked down the last piece and spoken the words “This
is my cheesecake.” For this trip, we decided to push the time to 55 seconds,
this may not seem like a big difference, but trust me, the extra five seconds
make a huge difference. Naturally, the cheesecake being eaten is of Marco’s
choice, this time the chosen item was the Godiva Cheesecake, a luscious slob of
rich chocolate and cheesecake all mixed into one. By the time Marco stuck his
spoon into the first bite, we had been making so much noise about it that the
entire section of restaurant could not help but stare in awe as to what was
unfolding in front of their very eyes (the waiter’s expression was priceless).
However, it was not meant to be as Marco finished in 57 seconds, just short of
his goal. But don’t worry, Marco is not a quitter, and I am sure he will come
up with the goods soon enough. Unfortunately, we would follow suit as a team
and come up short against Fresno State the very next day, we fought hard but a
couple major points here and there just didn’t roll our way. But we are
training hard and are eager to get back on the courts for our next dual.
NEW MEXICO
The following week we headed
to Albuquerque, New
Mexico, to take
on Nils’ alma mater, Northern Arizona University, as well as Bart and Maja’s former stomping grounds,
the University of New Mexico. Our match against the Lumberjacks went smoothly and we were able to
pull out a very satisfying 7-0 victory, our first of the season. Unfortunately,
our match against Lobos did not go as well and we dropped a tough 1-6 decision,
but we had some bright spots as Alex won a three setter and Marco pushed the
number 35 player in the nation to a third set super breaker. We also got to see
some vintage pics of Bart and Maja playing back in the day.
SO CAL
Next up we headed to what we
hoped were the sunny skies of southern California to take on UC Irvine and Santa Barbara - only to be greeted with on-and-off cloudy skies and
rain. But rain or shine, we had work to do, so after a little bit of a rain
delay we hit the courts looking to upset the nationally ranked Anteaters. After
an intense doubles point which included another rain delay, we went up 1-0 with
Geoff and Marco clinching at one doubles following Stephen and Paco’s win at
three doubles. A few short hours later our upset was complete with a 5-1 win.
Unfortunately we could not finish our road trip the next day with another win
as we dropped a 6-1 decision to a tough UC Santa Barbara team.
RANKED COMPETITION
After spending our last six
matches on the road, we were happy to be back on our home courts at the Student Tennis Center to take on our highest ranked opponents thus far.
First up we had our arch rivals, the Washington Huskies coming to town along
with their number 27 national ranking, a golden opportunity for us. We fought
hard in the doubles point but came up a little short to go down 1-0. However,
we came out fired up and unwilling to seize the dual easily in singles,
especially not to the Huskies. Washington capitalized on courts 1 and 3, while Geoff and I were
able to reply with wins on courts 4 and 5, respectively. This left Paco and
Stephen playing with us down 3-2, and the dual on the line. Paco had just split
sets, while Stephen found himself in a hole down a set and in a tiebreak down
5-1. However, Stephen amazingly battled back, reeling off six straight points
to win the breaker 7-5 to keep our hopes alive. However, it was not meant to be
as Paco dropped the third set to a nationally-ranked player. But we finished
strong as Stephen picked up a great win at six to finalize the heartbreaking
4-3 loss.
The next day we played another nationally-ranked
team, Denver, to close out our weekend. Again, we found ourselves
on the wrong end of a 4-3 match. It hurt a lot for us to lose such close
matches but we know how good we can be when it all comes together and we will
definitely remember that the next time we get a shot at a highly ranked team.
The
following week saw us playing four matches in five days. It turned out to be a
great week for us as we went 4-0, defeating Pacific, Nevada, Portland State and
a tough Portland team on the road. Hopefully that momentum will carry on in our
coming matches so we can make a run at our goal of making the NCAA tournament.
What to look for this week:
We head to Arizona to play 22nd-ranked Arizona State and 65th-ranked Arizona. The results and hopefully a good story or two will
come up next week on another edition of Duck Diary. Thanks for reading Duck
fans, and as always, GO DUCKS!
Romeo “Clincher” Mortera
