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The Rice Thresher
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by Eric Raub thresher staff For anxious Rice men's tennis fans waiting to get a taste of the Owls' potential, last weekend was a dream come true. Throughout most of the fall, the Owls have been separated, playing across the country at different tournaments and fighting several injuries as well. It was all in preparation for the definitive weekend of the fall season, the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's Region VI tournament at Fort Worth, which began Oct. 27 and concluded Tuesday. This tournament pitted the Owls against some of the best teams in the nation, five of which finished in the top 16 last year. Among others, the Owls faced off against powers Texas A&M University, Texas Christian University, the University of Texas and the University of Texas at Arlington. By the time the 128-player tournament ended, the Owls had established themselves as a team to watch out for this spring. "We had one of the better performances we've ever had," head coach Ron Smarr said. "It was the best tournament we could have had. That's the farthest we've ever had that many players advance in a decade, and we had two freshmen and a sophomore doing most of the damage." Smarr is referring to freshmen Richard and William Barker and sophomore Matthias Mathaes. William, seeded 19th, spent the weekend playing his way to a spot in the semifinals, where he lost to the tournament's second seed, UT-Arlington Andy Leber. Richard Barker, seeded 18th, had already faced Leber in the round of 16 and lost a desperately close match 5-7, 6-3, 7-6, with a 7-5 tiebreaker deciding the third set. "It couldn't have been closer," Richard said. "I was out on the court for five and a half hours and the tiebreaker was 7-5." Fourteenth-seeded Mathaes, meanwhile, wasn't playing like someone who had spent a large part of the fall sidelined with a shoulder injury. Mathaes advanced to the quarterfinals after a victory over Texas A & M's 29th-seeded Ryan Newport. Eventually, however, the strain of so much tennis took its toll on Mathaes and his shoulder, and he was forced to withdraw from a match against fifth-seeded Scott Eddins of TCU. "It was the combination of his shoulder hurting and the fact that he hadn't played but three times," Smarr said. "It was a miracle he made it that far. We had no idea how much he was hurting. He couldn't move." The whole Owl squad had been preparing for this tournament all fall, and it showed. Everyone wanted to play, and the Owls say everyone that could play played well. Sophomore Ramez Qamer, who fell in his first-round match, felt ill before the tournament but was not about to miss it. "Everyone won their first round matches except one person," Smarr said. "And in all fairness to Ramez, he was sick but still played." The Owls also took pride in the fact that almost every player suffered his first loss at the hands of a seeded opponent. Rice also advanced more players farther than any other team in the tournament except TCU. In all, Rice posted a 22-9 combined record in singles action for the tournament. "We were quite confident going in," William Barker said. "The whole team has trained really hard this year. We didn't have a bad loss and we had some good wins." And the Owls have one important advantage over TCU because the Horned Frogs' most dominating players this year are seniors. Rice's young team, barring injury, should only get better. "We could still do better," Richard Barker said. "The whole team could do better. We're nowhere near as good as we can be. This is the first time we've all been together." But what does all the potential mean for this spring? "There's a lot of work that still needs to be done," Richard said. "We've got a tough draw next semester but there's a kind of optimism that we can beat them. The whole team is expecting a lot." The Owls get to take it easy this weekend when they play against Rice tennis alumni at the Rice Reunion Classic at Jake Hess Tennis Stadium.
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