Janesville, Wis. - The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse men's tennis team fell 7-2 to Carthage College (Wis.) Sunday afternoon at Premier Tennis and Fitness.  The Eagles drop to 1-4 on the season while the Red Men improve to 4-0.

Carthage (Wis.) swept the doubles matches to take a 3-0 lead.  UWL led 5-2 at #2 doubles, but dropped the next four games to fall behind and could not regain momentum, dropping a 8-6 decision.  At #3, the Eagles were down 3-0 early on, battled back to keep the match close, but also fell 8-6.

"Doubles is always so important to start the match, and we haven't been able to get victories in doubles in all of our losses this season", said coach Bill Hehli.  "We had opportunites in all of the doubles matches today, but need to be able to close them out.  I hope we will figure it out as we get more experience."

In singles, UWL got a strong effort at #5 from Joey Schneider, who won convincingly 6-3, 6-0.  Sam Gowan also won at #6, winning 10-3 in a mactch tie-breaker after splitting the first two sets.  Matt Lindsay had a tight match at #4, but after winning a second set tie-break to even the match, fell 10-4 in the match tie-breaker. 

"Joey played his most complete singles match of the season", said Hehli.  "Sam was up and down, but pulled through as well, and I think Matt and Tony played very well.  Our singles play has been good enough to win matches, we just can't go down 3-0 in doubles.  We'll get to work on that in practice." 

UWL returns to action Friday, February 19 versus Macalester College (Minn.) in a match starting at 7:30 p.m. at the Rochester (Minn.) Tennis Connection.



Carthage College (Wis.) 7, UW-La Crosse 2

Singles competition
1. Alex Boomgarden (CARTHAGE) def. Tony Mirasola (UWL) 7-6, 6-4
2. Ryan Jump (CARTHAGE) def. Kyle Wogahn (UWL) 6-1, 6-1
3. Pawel Jaworski (CARTHAGE) def. Simon Brandt (UWL) 6-1, 6-1
4. Chris Conley (CARTHAGE) def. Matt Lindsay (UWL) 6-4, 6-7, 10-4
5. Joey Schneider (UWL) def. Alex Ferruzzi (CARTHAGE) 6-3, 6-0
6. Sam Gowan (UWL) def. Lukasz Jaworski (CARTHAGE) 6-3, 1-6, 10-3

Doubles competition
1. Pawel Jaworski/Chris Conley (CARTHAGE) def. Tony Mirasola/Kyle Wogahn (UWL) 8-3
2. Alex Boomgarden/Ryan Jump (CARTHAGE) def. Matt Lindsay/Joey Schneider (UWL) 8-6
3. Alex Ferruzzi/Lukasz Jaworski (CARTHAGE) def. Simon Brandt/Joey Shubert (UWL) 8-6