Photo courtesy of Ray Ambler/RAPhotos.com
Mustang News Staff Report
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The Cal Poly men’s and women’s tennis teams will open their spring seasons on the road this Friday.
The men’s tennis team start at No. 37 Saint Mary’s and head over to No. 56 Fresno State on Saturday. The women’s team travel to No. 8 UC Berkeley for the Winter Invitational this weekend, where it will play Saint Mary’s and Fresno State, as well.
The men’s team start off the season following a loss to Pacific in the semifinals of the Big West Tournament this past season. The team will also be without former standout All-American Andre Dome, who made it to the third round in the NCAA tournament last May and won Big West Player of the Year in consecutive seasons.
Senior Marco Comuzzo will take Dome’s spot as he comes into the season with a 7-4 record from this past fall. Behind Comuzzo are seniors Matt Thomson and Jurgen De Jager who went 5-3 and 3-5, respectively, last season.
Contributing to the team are rising freshmen Ben Donovan and Corey Pang. During the fall, Donovan went 1-0 in singles and 4-3 in doubles while Pang went 2-3 in singles and 4-2 in doubles.
Meanwhile, the women’s squad has seven returning players from 2013. The returners are joined by junior transfers Mika Padmanabhan, Hannah Stone and Bryn Bacharach who hail from Emory, Northern Arizona and UCLA, respectively.
The men’s team stay on the road to face New Mexico on Jan. 24 and Utah on Jan. 25. That Saturday the women’s team host San Francisco for their first home match, while the men return home on Feb. 1 to face Nevada.
Colin Patterson contributed to this report.