Golden Eagles open spring slate at No. 6 Tennessee Saturday
Two-time defending Ohio Valley Conference regular season tennis champion Tennessee Tech will get the spring dual match schedule underway this Saturday when it travels to Knoxville to challenge No. 6 Tennessee at 9 a.m.
By Rob Schabert, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports
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Goodfriend Tennis Center
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- Two-time defending Ohio Valley Conference
regular season tennis champion Tennessee Tech will get the spring
dual match schedule underway this Saturday when it travels to
Knoxville to challenge No. 6 Tennessee.
The Golden Eagles and Vols play the morning match beginning at 9
a.m. CT at the Goodfriend Tennis Center. It is the first dual match
of the year for both teams.
On Wednesday, Golden Eagle coach Kenny Doyle was still awaiting
word that his players had all returned to campus from locations
around the globe. The team planned to practice Thursday and Friday
amidst the first two days of classes for the spring semester, and
Doyle will decipher the lineup. Expected to challenge for the top
spots in the lineup will be Oleksiy Arovin,
a sophomore from the Ukraine, Vasily Eremeev,
a senior from Russia, and Alberto
Esteban, a freshman from Spain.
Doyle's Golden Eagle squad has rolled through the past two seasons
unbeaten in OVC play with a perfect 16-0 record, netting the
veteran mentor back-to-back OVC Coach of the Year awards.
It has been the near-impossible non-conference early season
schedules the past two years that have helped build the Golden
Eagles into such a success once the season reaches OVC play, and
Doyle is hoping that this year's early matches will continue that
challenging trend. In addition to Tennessee, Tech's non-OVC matches
include contests against top-notch foes such as No. 48 Louisville,
No. 62 Georgia State, UNC Asheville, Chattanooga, Lipscomb,
Kennesaw State and UNC Greensboro.
"There's no question that our difficult non-conference schedule
helps prepare us for the OVC schedule," Doyle said. He added that
the 2014 season will be a year of transition for his squad, as it
looks to replace some very big roles.
The Golden Eagle lineup will have a distinctly different look in
2014, with the absence of standouts Alejandro Augusto, two-time OVC
Player of the Year Syrym Abdukhalikov, and veteran Artura Santa
Ruiz. The current Golden Eagle roster includes just one senior
(Eremeev) and one junior (Artem
Tarasov/photo above). Rounding out the roster are
sophomores Arovin, Alvaro Cintas,
Gagan Jain, and Othon Lima, plus
freshmen Esteban and Yusuke Yodono.
Lima is out of action until February with a shoulder injury.
Tech plays its first nine matches of the season on the road,
before playing at home for the first time on March 15-16 with OVC
matches against Murray State and Austin Peay.
