The Baylor boys took their lumps on the tennis court in 2009. They have no intention of letting that happen again this season.
The Red Raiders will begin today’s 54th annual Rotary Tournament planning to improve on last year’s last-place finish. Armed with a trio of newcomers, they expect to exceed greatly their total of 4.5 points.
Play starts at 8:30 at Baylor and GPS this morning, with semifinals slated to begin at 12:30 p.m. Finals will start at 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Baylor has the A Division teams, GPS the B brackets.
“We hope to be in the mix this year,” Baylor director of tennis Ned Caswell said. “Last year was a learning experience for us, but we were rebuilding and turning things around.”
Caswell’s ties aided in a couple of key additions to the roster. Anderson Scarpa’s uncle Paul, who last year became the winningest coach in NCAA history, was Caswell’s coach at Furman. Carlos Cuevas, who is from Chile, played for a coach who played for Caswell.
Michael Goldstein came in from Chapel Hill, N.C., giving the Red Raiders three strong, evenly matched additions.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Caswell said. “Those guys are pretty interchangeable, and it’s changed the whole face of the program to have competition in practice on a daily basis.”
Toss in Alex Cooper and Zach Moore, who played in the top half of the lineup last season, and depth has become a strength for Baylor this year. The Raiders did not start their regular season until Wednesday and have beat Pope John Paul II and Lone Oak by identical 7-0 scores.
The team will enter the Rotary with two top seeds: Cooper and Eric Roddy. Knoxville Webb has the most boys’ top seeds with four total, while Montgomery Bell Academy has three, including two of the top three doubles tandems.
Defending champion McCallie, which lost its top six players from last year, has only one seeded player — Daniel Pare, who is seeded fourth in No. 4 singles.
Defending girls’ champion Vestavia Hills has four top seeds, while 2009 runner-up GPS has three: Sarah Evans at No. 1 singles, Lauren Schlabach at No. 6 and Emma McCallie and Aliza Williams at No. 3 doubles.
Hutchison, who won the state girls’ team championship last year, claimed the other two top slots. Mountain Brook (Ala.), which had to scratch from last year’s field due to injuries and the prom, returns this year.
“The Rotary is a great strong field,” Caswell said, noting that seedings come primarily from Southern USTA rankings. “The top flights in both boys and girls are great; there are top-seeded kids in the South in this event. You may see some seeds get beat, and you may not, but a kid won’t walk through their draw just because they are seeded.
“I think there are four teams in both boys and girls that are in the mix for the title. I just hope that we’re one of them.”