Courtesy Photo

Last season the San Diego State men’s tennis team came up just one match short of a Mountain West Conference championship. Needless to say, there are high hopes for the Aztecs heading into this year.

Those heightened expectations came into play for the first time this season on Saturday, against SoCal rival No. 8 USC. SDSU was hoping that it would be able to steal a victory from the Trojans, but it was not to be, as the Aztecs fell by a score of 5-2.

The Trojans picked up the doubles point by sweeping all three matches, and then took four out of the six singles contests to effectively send SDSU down south with a record of 0-1.

The two singles wins for the Red and Black, though, proved to be quite promising ones as newcomers junior Benedikt Stronk and sophomore Christian Groh each won his singles contests. Groh took down Kaes Van’t Hof 6-2, 4-6, 6-2. and Stronk defeated Johan Berg 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

“It felt great for me to get out there and play my first team match,” Stronk said. “It was against a pretty strong opponent and I was a little nervous – but played pretty well, and it was really important for me to win my first match.”

Even though the Aztecs were beaten they still know that there is a lot of tennis left to be played this year. The team can only get better with the experience that its newcomers will garner as the year goes on.

One of the main question marks for the team, however, is how it will fare without the services of departed seniors Felix Hardt and Ryan Redondo, who accounted for many victories in both singles and doubles action last year.

Luckily, the team does have a strong returning nucleus – which includes seniors Daniel Jung, Armando Carrascosa (ranked No. 51 heading into Saturday’s contest), Dontia Haynes and reigning MWC freshman of the year, Markus Dickhardt. The Aztecs are also hoping that Groh and Stronk will fill the void left by the stars.

“It is always nice to start off the season,” Jung said. “The only difference is that this year we had to do it against a top-ten team.”

“It was nice to kick off the season and we were ready for some competition,” head coach Gene Carswell said. “We’ve got a pretty good squad this year and were just a little rusty.”

The Aztecs will try breaking in the brand new tennis center with their first victory, when they take on UC Riverside and Northern Arizona in a doubleheader. The match up against the UC-Riverside Highlanders will be 9:30 a.m. next Saturday followed immediately by a match-up against the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks.