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Men’s Tennis Monthly Newsletter - September & October 2017 Update

Dear Lobo Tennis Fans,
 
The fall season has been in full swing these past few weeks. I am going to try and keep you all updated as, and when, things are happening throughout the year. It’s always fun starting the year out strong. We spend all summer formulating the plan for the year and get so excited to have our guys back on campus. Then, reality truly hits and becomes organized chaos for 16 weeks of the semester.

One thing is for sure though, after one year on the job as head coach, I know this is a job for life. I come to the office every day and it hasn’t felt like work yet. On that note, our team this year is going to be fun to watch. We have some personalities on this team and I think, once they become comfortable playing in front of Lobo Nation, those personalities will be endearing. Our challenge to the team (for now): Take our practices one day at a time and continue to improve and get better each day. If we can truly hold our standards to be the highest every day, then this will be a good year. We have 11 home matches this spring, which is where I am challenging you, our amazing Lobo tennis fans, to get behind us and make sure we provide these student athletes with the best possible atmosphere to play college tennis. 
 
The schedule for Spring 2018 is already out. Our conference championship this year will be in beautiful San Diego, Calif. I want to take this message and make this the official invite to our fans to join us at that event in late April. It’s going to be a fun event and it would be awesome to make San Diego our “Pit west”, just like our basketball teams do in Las Vegas. 
 
Coming back to the fall matches we play, we’ve had a successful few weeks on several different fronts. Robin took a group of three guys down to NMSU for the first tournament of the fall. We had some mixed results which is always to be expected after a long summer, but we could see progress in the guy’s games and it was encouraging to see our team competing hard, even though we weren’t playing our best tennis yet.
 
We then had a split squad week – we had four guys here in Albuquerque with Robin and three guys on the road playing the strongest tournament of the fall – The ITA All-American Championships in Tulsa, Okla. In Albuquerque, we fought… hard.

One of my highlights was getting a commentary from our local RS Junior Michael Tran’s match against NMSU’s Luis Flores. He came back from being down 5-4 in the third set to win his match in impressive fashion. When I received my recap from Robin every day, I felt a sense of pride. Words such as “fight”, “heart” and “perseverance” were thrown around. These are words that I call “championship words.” These are characteristics that push us to where we want to get to this year.

In Tulsa, it was no different. Our freshman from Germany, Tim Buttner, had some nice wins after defeating players from Baylor and Oklahoma respectively before falling to a seed from UAB. Tim’s first round match took 3 hours and 25 minutes – quite a way to get the first win of his career.

Dom West played a very close match with a sophomore from Texas A&M, who is currently ranked #1000 in the ATP world rankings. Dom is maturing, both physically and mentally, and his game is taking some serious strides in the right direction.

Ricky Hernandez Tong had somewhat of a breakthrough tournament. He qualified for the main draw and defeated top ranked players from Florida State, South Carolina and Florida on his way to falling to a highly ranked player from Columbia in the main draw. In his last round qualifying match, Ricky used his maturity and college experience to beat one of the best incoming freshman in college tennis, Duarte Vale, who will be one to look out for this year. His current ITF ranking is 21 in the world and Ricky beat him in a close 3 set match 6-4 in the third set. As with any student athlete, breaking down barriers is important on the journey towards success. Ricky is showing a new sense of maturity and is leading our young crop of Lobos with impressive ability so far this year. 
 
On Monday, I will be leaving to take four guys to the 2017 ITA Mountain Region Championships in Provo, Utah. This is a fun event – we compete in a Round of 128 draw against players from our region (who we will also see again in season). I believe Ricky and Dom will be seeded in the top six seeds. For our two freshman going with us, it will be their first chance to see their level of play in our regional competition. This time of year is very exciting. If we have a player win the tournament, they will have the opportunity to go to the newly revamped ITA Fall National Championships. This tournament will take place early November in Palm Springs, Calif. 
 
I will write another update soon. I get lots of questions from our tennis community about how you can help us the most. I respond in two ways: The first is to come and watch our student athletes play whenever and wherever you can. Secondly, if you were in a position to help us financially, it would have a tremendous impact on our program and the student athletes experience this coming year. I wanted to send out the online portal for people to make donations directly to our budget if anyone is interested in helping out our program. Any donation made to our baseline club would go directly to providing our student athletes with an enhanced experience in our 2017-18 season. Our “baseline club” information can be found here: https://www.unmfund.org/fund/mtennis/ 
 
As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at bdunbar@unm.edu. I am always happy to hear from our community. 
 
Go Lobos! 
 
Ben Dunbar 
Head Men’s Tennis Coach
The University of New Mexico (’12)
#GOLOBOS
 
Mailing Address:
Ben Dunbar – Men’s Tennis
The University of New Mexico Lobos
Colleen J. Maloof Administration Building 
1 University of New Mexico 
MSC04 2680 
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001