Men's Tennis 2009 Season Comes to an End

Men's Tennis 2009 Season Comes to an End

April 24, 2009

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - The Santa Clara men's tennis team finished out its season last weekend in San Diego at the West Coast Conference championships. Despite a disappointing eighth place finish in the WCC, the Broncos had many bright spots this season and are looking forward to a productive off-season and an exciting fall 2009 season.

"I think I speak for the whole team when I say we are disappointed with this season. We wanted to improve from last year's eighth place WCC finish and we didn't," said head coach Derek Mills. "We had some bright spots, though, with John Iwanski and Charlie Burke getting their first career wins and Jay Wong, Kenzo Hirakawa-Wong, and Kyle Dandan receiving WCC honors."

The Broncos finished out the season with a 4-14 dual season record and eighth in the West Coast Conference tournament. Santa Clara is returning four of its top players in the fall and has a top 25 nationally ranked recruiting class coming to the Mission Campus next year.

"We have some of our best players coming back in Jay Wong, Kyle Dandan, Tommy Hicks, and Brian Bogan. We're excited. We have four great guys in our recruiting class. We know we are going to be better than this year," said Mills. "We're tired of the conference beating up on us. Our mantra now is `Worst to First'. An eighth place finish two years in a row is too much and we're going to change that."

Mills closed with, "We are going to start working out as soon as possible. We have some work to do before next season."

The Broncos have a lot of upside and are very optimistic going into the off-season. SCU plays a difficult schedule every year, including No. 1 Stanford, No. 17 Pepperdine, and No. 54 Pacific, among a number of nationally ranked teams. Santa Clara has significant room to improve on this season and the team is taking advantage of every opportunity to develop and get better.