April 11, 2006
Santa Clara, Calif. - The end of the year is drawing near and the Santa Clara men's tennis team would like nothing better than to finish off the 2006 season with a strong performance at the West Coast Conference Tournament next weekend. Helping Santa Clara (11-12) tune up for the league championships will be Sacramento State in a contest that was rescheduled from March 5 due to inclement weather. The match between the two Northern California rivals is set for a 3 p.m. start time on Thursday at the Degheri Tennis Center.
Coming into Thursday's match-up with Santa Clara, Sacramento State owns a mark of 11-7 after splitting two matches over the weekend. Sacramento State defeated Loyola Marymount 5-2, but fell to visiting Pacific by the same score. A trio of juniors makes up the majority of the starting line-up, as Warwick Foy, Gabriel Loredo, and Ramon Perez man positions two, three, and five, while seniors Junaid Hossain and Paul Komorniczak book-end the singles ladder. Sophomore Hague Van Dillen rounds out the rest of the singles players at the No. 4 spot. Slava Konikov is in his first season at the helm of the Hornets tennis program and possesses international coaching experience as the head coach of the Belarusian Davis Cup team from 1995-2002.
"Sacramento State is another team that can cause trouble," noted head coach George Husack. "They fight well and have talented players that can bring a top-level game at any time. We've been pretty successful with them the last several years, but can certainly not take anything for granted."