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Serving notice
Tennis no longer cellar-dweller
By Jimmy Lemke
There are a lot of negative numbers surrounding the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee tennis team.
Twenty-five straight losses to UW-Green Bay from 1990 through 2005. Six straight years without a Horizon League Tournament Victory. Loss after agonizing loss to UIC. The bad news piled up for most of Milwaukee's stay in D-I.
The last few years, however, are starting to lean toward the positive. Three straight victories over Green Bay. Four victories in the conference tournament the last two years. They still can't beat UIC, but no one can--UIC has won over 100 straight conference matches. After a grueling Horizon League Tournament, the Milwaukee Panthers finished in 5th place, their second-best finish in conference history.
This past weekend, they added to the positive side of the stat sheet. Milwaukee opened the first round of the Horizon League Tournament with a victory over Wright State, 4-2. The Raiders came out of the box fast, sweeping the No. 1 and 2 singles matches over Panthers Kelly Drvaric and Martina Schnapp. Jenna Felsher and Ashley Schoneman, Milwaukee's bottom two players, answered quickly by evening the score at 2-2. Sammi Schoen and Kari Kastenholz were left in battles. Kastenholz scored the victory with a 7-5 score in the final set of her match, sending the Panthers to the second round.
The Panthers found themselves stuck in the second round against Detroit when the Titans clinched a doubles match against Schnapp and Schoneman. With the doubles match in the pocket, the Titans escaped from Milwaukee, 4-1 in a match that would have been much closer had the game been played on. Felsher and Kastenholz each had racked up the first set in their respective matches and were tied in the second when the team match was ended. Had they gone on to win their matches, the Panthers would have lost 4-3. Alas, the doubles match proved to be the key, and Milwaukee got stuck when they came up short-handed.
In the fifth-place match, the Panthers found themselves facing the old rivals from up north. Milwaukee had defeated Green Bay earlier in the week, but doing it again was a tall order, especially with history on the line. With their second-highest finish in conference history in the balance, the Milwaukee Panthers swept the Phoenix in straight sets to take fifth place in the Horizon League and finish with a school record 14 victories.
Kari Kastenholz, Jenna Felsher, and Sammi Schoen each took singles matches in the contest. With Martina Schnapp and Ashley Schoneman taking a doubles victory and Kastenholz and Kelly Drvaric finishing successfully in No. 1 doubles, the three singles matches that were taking place got cut short, as well as Felsher and Schoen's doubles match. Out of the four matches that were left unfinished, only Ashley Schoneman was playing from behind, and even she was leading her second set. The victory meant that Milwaukee had ended the season 14-12, the best Division I record ever achieved by the university.
"It is a good way to end another good season," Milwaukee head coach Matt McCaskill said courtesy of UWMPanthers.com. "I think it is two good seasons in a row and it is nice to add another victory to our total from last season. A fifth-place finish again in the league is solid and we saw a lot of good things again this year."
The Panthers will be looking to come out of the gate even stronger next season, as the entire roster save junior Lauren Fenley is an underclassmen.
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