Last Friday, Villanova men’s tennis hosted Drexel, losing, 6-1, in the first match of the winter season.

The Wildcats took doubles by winning two of three matches. Senior Josh Robinson and freshman Thomas Wakefield started off the match with a 6-3 win over Drexel’s Alex De Sousa and Alan Jesudason. 

The opening win was then followed by junior Lukas Choi and freshman Will Monahan’s match against Will Burridge and Hussein El Tawil, as Choi and Monahan narrowly outlasted the Drexel duo and won 6-4. Sophomore Cooper Gordan and senior Eitan Khromchenko fell, 6-4, in what was a back-and-forth match against Alessio Azzalini and Egor Kiraosov. 

As for singles, Villanova dropped all of its matches. In the opening spot, Robinson fell to Jesudason. Senior Ryan Nguyen faced Drexel’s El Tawil and lost. Monahan was in third position for the day, taking on De Sousa, being routed by the latter after winning the first set, in a competitive series. 

Wakefield and Azzalini played a tight match in which the first set went into a tiebreaker, with Azzalini eventually prevailing, 7-6, winning the last set. In the fifth spot, Khromchenko fell, 6-2 and 6-1, against Burridge. 

Rounding out the match for Villanova was Choi, who fell in the final set (2-6, 7-5, 10-4) in a close match with Josue Guzman. 

The Wildcats hope to rebound on the road in their next match against Colgate on Feb. 3.

The women’s tennis team had a busy weekend, traveling to play matches against Delaware on Saturday and Navy on Sunday, dropping both competitions. 

The Wildcats traveled to Newark, Delaware on Saturday to face the Blue Hens and fell, 6-1. Delaware won all three doubles matches, and in singles freshman Lauren Monti won the first single match of the spring season for the Wildcats, playing out of the sixth spot. 

Sunday’s match against Navy proved to be more competitive, but Villanova still ended up coming short, losing, 5-2. Junior Valieriia Kornieva and graduate Amanda Rivera-Gonzalez lost against Navy’s Kate Lee and Parvathi Shanker in doubles play, giving Navy an early edge. 

The Wildcats rallied to claim the doubles point, as the sophomore pair of Emily Callahan and Maggie Gehrig defeated Makaila Cheng and Olivia Fermo, 6-3, and the duo of freshman Miram Gondorova and graduate Ami Grace Dougah held off a late surge from Stella Ribaudo and Emily Tannenbaum. Navy would then win five singles matches, and would rise to an all time record of 11-0 against Villanova. 

Before Villanova lost to Navy, its losses were to regionally ranked teams in Penn and Delaware.

“Right now, I’m in the process of trying to figure out our best six singles players,” women’s tennis head coach Steve Reiniger said. “Right now we have more depth than we did in the past, so it’s more of a challenge. Opening up against tough teams will only help us in our Big East play. We play Providence Feb. 3 so this
experience will only help us.” 

The Wildcats will be back in action next weekend, when they travel to Lehigh on Feb. 2 and Providence on Feb. 3.