Bona tennis to get test at ECACs

Moritz: Bona tennis to get test at ECACs

10/03/2003

ST. BONAVENTURE — Half of the starting lineup is new.
The team has to replace two of its top three players — maybe the two best players in the program’s history — and three all conference players.
But don’t tell Michael Bates that his St. Bonaventure men’s tennis team is in a rebuilding year.
“We don’t like to use rebuilding, we use reloading,” Bates said. “Rebuilding means we’re kind of down at the bottom, and I don’t think we are. I think we still have a good nucleus from last year.”
It’s the old glass half-empty/half-full argument.
Yeah, the Bonnies must replace three starters — including four-time all-conference selections Vili Nurmi and Mikko Haulos.
But Bona also returns three starters from last year’s Atlantic 10 championship squad that lost to Texas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament — including conference player of the year Mario Arce.

“We have three starters back from last year’s team that have been to the NCAAs and have some experience,” Bates said. “The freshmen coming in ... no, they’re not Vili or Mikko, but at the same time, the last two weeks they’ve grown a lot. If they continue to go that way, we’ll still be a good team.”
The Bonnies continue their fall season this weekend at the prestigious ECAC Championships. The four-day tournament features the top-16 teams in the East. Bona is seeded 13th and opens against fourth-seeded Penn State today.
The winning team gets an automatic bid to the national indoor championships.
But for the Bonnies, this weekend is as much about learning and competing as it is about winning.

“We have a lot of new guys, so of course it’s going to be tough this whole semester while our freshmen get used to college” said Arce, a junior. “The fall semester is going to be a good season for them to get used to college tennis.”
This will be Bona’s second trip to the ECACs. A year ago, the Bonnies lost all of their team matches as the No. 15 seed.
But Arce and Nurmi teamed to beat Harvard’s top doubles team — which at the time, was ranked 24th in the nation — and the Bonnies turned in respectable performances across the board.
“It helped us prepare for the rest of the year,” Bates said. “It proved to everybody that we are as good as some of these teams out there. We just have to work a little bit harder to catch up to them.”
Fueled in part by their showing at the ECAC tourney, the Bonnies went on to win their second A-10 championship in three years — earning the league’s automatic bid to the NCAAs.
That team was not only talented (four all-league selections), it was also an extraordinarily close-knit group.

“We were a tight team,” Arce said. “Pretty much the whole team had been playing together for two years.”
A big reason for that was Nurmi and Haulos — seniors who were co-captains and lockerroom leaders.
But they’re gone — Nurmi graduated in May, Haulos is finishing up his degree this semester — as is Greg Price, an all-league selection as a sophomore.
That leaves Arce to shoulder a lot of the load.
“The players are going to have to look up to Mario,” Bates said. “He is the No. 1 player. I think he took on some of that leadership last year. Hopefully, he learned some stuff from Vili and Mikko — when to bring the team together and talk to them.”
Arce added, “A big part of the team is on me. Not just the way I play, but the way I interact with the whole team. I’m trying to do my best to make it be just like it was last year.”
You can never duplicate team chemistry from one year to another.
But you can replicate it.
Just three weeks into the fall season, there are signs that this Bona team is coming together.
“The good thing is we have five upperclassmen, and the freshmen are really nice guys,” Arce said. “It’s always important for the team to have not just a good relationship inside the court but outside the court, and I think we’re improving that.”
There’s no better place to build team chemistry then on the road. And there’s no better road trip for the Bonnies to take than the one to ECAC — where they’ll play the best of the best.
How they fare this weekend will go a long way in showing whether Bona is rebuilding ... or merely reloading for another A-10 title run.
“I want our guys to go down there and realize what levels there are and what we have to strive for in order to win our conference,” Bates said. “I’d like to come out with a winning record. That would help us, confidence wise.”
(Brian Moritz is a sports writer for The Times Herald.)