Matias Lapidus (Ken Sciallo/Sevilla Photography)
Posted: Mar 26, 2024
COSTA MESA, CA - The Vaqueros Men's Tennis regular season dual matches are ending this week, and the team played with poise, tenacity and focus today away at Orange Coast.
The three doubles matches ended in favor of the Vaqueros 2-1, with victories at the #1 position with Matias Lapidus and Mauritz Seitz 8-4 and #3 Ada Guler and Dominic Arnell. Standout performance by Ada Guler (aka "the King of Volleys") who played with such confidence and courage from a position in the court that is fairly new to him.
"Ada is maturing in his game, particularly his concept of doubles and how his net game takes time away from his opponents and makes them uncomfortable," head coach Danny Echt said. "Dom's steady stream of penetrating groundies set up Ada's volleys today as they won in commanding fashion, 8-3."
The singles performance was tremendous as the Vaqs captured all singles matches, yet there was a lot of fight on the Vaqs' part to get them through. Six of the singles sets were either won 7-5, 7-6, or 11-9 in the super breaker, and the Vaqs naturally won all those close sets.
Daniel Truong was down 3-6 and 5-7 in the 3rd set super breaker to come back and close out his match at #4 11-9. Daniel tightened up his return consistency effectively slicing the backhand return deep to get him into favorable inside out forehand patterns which put his opponent on his heels. At #2, an even more remarkable comeback came from Matias Lapidus who was down 4-8 in the 3rd set super breaker. Matias' patience and willingness to defend intelligently, with his capacity to hit clean backcourt shots, made the difference late in the match.
"Matias' free-flowing footwork has catapulted the quality of his ball striking," Echt added.
Mauritz Seitz--SBCC's #1--played methodically, dismantling his opponent with backcourt consistency and a phenomenal ability to keep pressure on when he earned shorter balls.
"It was like Mauritz was playing a video game out there today. ... His creativity and variety in shot making were top notch," Echt said proudly.
The last match featured two physical players who battled hard, exhausting one another with long rallies and great movement as #3 Vaqueros Dom Arnell reached deep to pull out his victory 7-5, 7-6.
The Vaqueros travel to Fullerton on Thursday, then playing WSC Individuals next week before the team playoff season begins.
