By Andrew Krumme
The University of Louisville men’s tennis team finished second in the Conference USA tournament last spring, and the group is only looking to improve as they embark on their inaugural season in the Big East Conference.
“We want to improve our national ranking,” said an ambitious Head Tennis Coach Rex Ecarma. “We’d love to get into the Sweet Sixteen or better of the NCAA Tournament. We would also like to do well in our other three tournaments but we are really just trying to enhance our seed for the NCAA Tournament.”
The Cards began fall season play in Tulsa at the All American Championships Monday. They will finish out the fall season with the Louisville Invitational and the Omni Regional. After a two-and-a-half month hiatus, play resumes Jan. 13 at home against Northwestern, which will mark the real beginning for the team’s quest to make some noise in the NCAA Tournament this season.
The Louisville tennis squad will try to build on last year’s solid season as it looks to grab its third consecutive at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament this year. After finishing last year at No. 24 in the nation, the program’s highest ever ranking, the Cards have begun the season with some solid showings at the Middle Tennessee Invitational and the Cincinnati Collegiate Invitational.
Damar Johnson, Slavko Radman and some promising doubles duos set the Cards up for an exciting season. Johnson, a junior from Jamaica entered the year with a career-best No. 38 singles ranking. As Ecarma’s top dog last year, Johnson compiled a 19-13 record while snagging first team all conference.
Johnson’s junior counterpart Radman led the team with an overall record of 20-5 last year and cracked the singles rankings for the first time last year as well. Radman showed he could perform in the clutch, going undefeated in the Conference USA Tournament last year en route to being named singles player of the tournament. Radman and Johnson also team up for some doubles and complement the senior doubles tandem of Jakob Gustafsson and Jeremy Clark very nicely. Both doubles teams’ success last year gave coach Ecarma a solid one-two punch on both the singles and doubles side.
Coach Ecarma recognized that its season will be a long one and he knows he will have to rely on his upperclassmen to maintain the intensity and focus throughout their grueling schedule.
“We are looking to the veterans from last year’s team to step up,” he said. “They have to continue to raise the standard for our program. Our schedule is loaded and could be one of the toughest in the country.”
While much of the spring season consists of different tournaments and invitationals Louisville will dive into the bulk of their schedule come next semester when they go up against the likes of Notre Dame and Georgia and take a trip to the Blue and Gray Invitational in Montgomery, Ala., which Ecarma tabbed as “the hardest tournament to win for our team.”
The Cards’ next event is the Louisville Invitational on Oct. 14-16, which they host at the Bass-Rudd Tennis Center.
