Notre Dame continued its winning ways Sunday when it defeated Indiana 7-0 in a nonconference match at Eck Tennis Pavilion. Sunday’s match was the fifth time in Notre Dame’s last six games it has won by a score of 7-0.
The Irish (7-1, 1-0 ACC) were powered by singles wins from sophomore Grayson Broadus, freshman Guillermo Cabrera, freshman Matt Gamble, sophomore Alex Lebedev and freshman Jonathan Small, who all won their matches in straight sets. Senior Josh Hagar won his first set 6-4 before dropping the second set 6-1. Hagar emerged victorious in the third and decisive set, 7-5.
The No. 1 doubles team of seniors Eddy Covalschi and Hagar came back to win its match 6-4, while the No. 3 team of junior Brendon Kempin/Broadus won its match 6-1.
Irish head coach Ryan Sachire said the performances from senior captains Covalschi and Hagar stood out to him against the Hoosiers (7-4, 0-1 Big Ten).
“You have to give a lot of credit to our two senior captains,” Sachire said. “They won a big match at No. 1 doubles to clinch the doubles points for our team and they were playing against a really good doubles team from Indiana. Our guys got down and one guy actually had the flu a little bit, so there was some pretty decent adversity facing our guys and they rallied to win 6-4 and competed really well down the stretch. I’m really proud of them.”
Sachire also said he was impressed by the performance of freshman Jonathan Small.
“I think the next person to single out is one of our freshman, Jonathan Small,” Sachire said. “Coming into today he didn’t expect to play in the singles lineup and but Eddy Covalschi was feeling a little under the weather so we had to pull him out of singles. Jonathan came in and did No. 6 singles for us and I believe he got the fourth point that clinched the singles match for us. It’s not easy to be ready to go when you don’t know if you’re going to play or not, but he did a heck of a job for us.”
Sachire said his team will continue to practice on improving serving as well as individual aspects of each players’ game as the season continues.
“I definitely think serving is key,” Sachire said. “I think one of the things that we want to do a great job of is attacking the second serve of our opponents. We started working on that last week and really made some good strides and we’ll continue to do that moving forward. In terms of specifics, there’s not a ton of time between now and our next match on Friday against Northwestern, but we’ll spend time on Wednesday and Thursday in practice with each guy to improve one or two things individually in his game and be ready to go on Friday.”
The Irish will be back in action on Friday night when they host Northwestern at Eck Tennis Pavilion.
Sachire said his team will take some time off to recover before the match against Northwestern.
“We’ll recover and use tomorrow and maybe Tuesday for some guys for recovery, and then we’ll get back to practice,” Sachire said.
