“We’re looking forward to testing ourselves against all the quality teams in the WAC,” said head coach Adam Reeb. “We’re playing our best tennis of the year right now, which is exciting and what you want for sure. Throughout the entire season so far, we’ve done a good job of keeping things in perspective and just focusing on getting better every day. That mindset has served us well and it will continue to serve us well as we start conference play. We can’t wait to start WAC play.”
Grand Canyon received four first place votes, picked to win the league title in 2016, followed closely by NM State with two first place votes. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and UMKC were picked to finish in the middle of the pack while Seattle U was picked to finish fifth and Chicago State sixth.
Michael Schoettler (Tacoma, Wash.), Matt Alderson (Bainbridge Island, Wash.), and Connor Leahy (Portland, Ore.) have each already received WAC Male Tennis Athlete of the Week honors this spring as the Redhawks have won eight of their last nine matches heading into league play this weekend. Individually, Leahy has also won nine of the last 10 singles matches as well as 10 straight doubles matches with partner John Stormans (Olympia, Wash.) while Schoettler is on a seven-match win streak in singles.
After a five-match homestand, the Redhawks will take back-to-back road trips to Las Cruces, N.M. and Kansas City, Mo. for five straight conference matches before returning home for Senior Day vs. Linfield on Saturday, Apr. 23 at the SU Tennis Courts. This weekend, SU faces NM State (Mar. 24), UMKC (Mar. 25), and UTRGV (Mar. 26), hosted by NM State.