Men's College Tennis
Marist College 7, Rider University 0
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Match
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.?The Rider University men's tennis team lost to the defending conference champion Marist Red Foxes on Thursday afternoon, in a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference match. “Marist is the cream of the crop in the conference,” said head coach Ed Torres. “They have played in a lot of tournaments so far this year so they are way ahead of our guys at this point of the season.”
Marist (2-0, 2-0 MAAC) swept the doubles competition and won all six singles matches.
For Rider (1-2, 0-1 MAAC), sophomore Josh Rultenberg (Lafayette Hill, Pa./Plymouth-Whitemarsh) won four games before falling in straight sets at number two singles. Fellow sophomore Christopher Esposito (Ocean Grove/Neptune) also won four games at number five singles.
“Josh's serve is very good this year,” Torres said about his number two singles player. “His serve made the Marist player make a lot of forced errors and that kept him in the match.”
The match was originally scheduled for Wednesday but was postponed 24 hours due to heavy rain in the Poughkeepsie area.
“Playing teams that are better than you make you better in the long run,” Torres added. “The experience that we went through today will help us. It makes you work harder when you face top level competition. Our guys worked their tails off. You can't really tell by the scores but we really played hard. I do think we did a good job keeping the ball in play which is what you have to do against this type of team. You have to be consistent, patient and make the opponent make the mistake. We stayed in a lot of the points by hitting the ball back over nine or 10 times. You just have to keep the rally going as long as you can.”
The Red Foxes defeated Rider last season, also by a 7-0 score.
Both the men's and women's tennis teams travel to Loudonville, New York on Saturday for a MAAC match against Siena College.
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