Commencement, tennis mix for Bonnies

Commencement, tennis mix for Bonnies

By brian moritz , The Times Herald

05/11/2003

ST. BONAVENTURE — Vili Nurmi thought his trip was over.
After a seemingly endless series of flights from Finland to Buffalo, Nurmi arrived in Western New York in August of 1999.
He thought he had just a short car ride to his new home, St. Bonaventure University.
“I thought this place was close to Buffalo,” said Nurmi, a native of Lahti, Finland. “Then we took off from the airport and drove over Humphrey Hill, and I’m thinking ‘Where is this guy taking me?’”
That 90-minute drive down Route 219 was just the start of the trip for Nurmi.
Within five months, he was joined at Bona by classmate and country-mate Mikko Haulos (a native of Oulu, Finland).
Over the next four years, the two redefined St. Bonaventure tennis, taking the program to places it had never even dreamed.
Nurmi and Haulos are the core of a program that has won two Atlantic 10 titles and made two NCAA Tournament appearances in the past three years.
On Saturday, Nurmi and Haulos competed with the Bonnies at the NCAA Tournament for the second time. The Bonnies lost to Texas, 5-0.
Today, Nurmi will receive his bachelor’s degree in marketing. Haulos, who came to school in mid-year, is on pace to earn his bachelor’s degree in management science.
“What else can you ask for?” Nurmi said. “Playing in the NCAA Tournament and graduating on the same weekend.”

LET’S JUST PUT it on the table — Vili Nurmi and Mikko Haulos are the most successful athletes at St. Bonaventure in the past 30 years.
The fact that they play tennis, that they toil in relative obscurity along with the rest of the school’s non-revenue sports, doesn’t diminish their accomplishments.
Both Nurmi and Haulos have been all-conference performers each of their four years — a virtually unheard-of feat at Bona.
Before the two arrived on campus, the Bonnies had never placed better than fifth at the Atlantic 10 championships. With Nurmi and Haulos, the Bonnies haven’t finished lower than third — and they’ve won the league title twice.
“I don’t think any other sport on this campus can say that,” said Bona coach Michael Bates.
Nurmi and Haulos have been to two NCAA Tournaments. Only four other players in St. Bonaventure history can match that claim — Mike Kull, Gene Fahey, Billy Kalbaugh and Bob Lanier.
“In my eight years being here, they’re the two that have affected the team the most,” Bates said. “They’ve taken us from being so-so in our conference and region to being considered one of the top-15 teams (in the region) and to two NCAA appearances.”

The Bona tennis program was not in great shape four years ago. The Bonnies were coming off a disastrous 4-22 1998-99 season.
That changed when Nurmi — who nearly went to Louisville — arrived on campus as the star of a solid recruiting class.
“You could see the other guys being so much more enthusiastic than what I had heard from the year before,” Nurmi said. “I head heard that the year before, they used to go into matches (dejected), but everyone felt that (the first) year was different, that we had a chance.”
When Haulos arrived in January in time for the spring season, that confidence only grew.
For one thing, Nurmi and Haulos were outstanding tennis players. Both were accomplished junior players in Finland and quickly proved to be very good in the A-10. Both earned all-league honors as freshmen, with Nurmi picking up Rookie of the Year honors.
But the duo brought more than serious skills to the Bona program.
“When they both came in here, they didn’t really know college tennis that well,” Bates said. “For them it was just another tennis match out there. It doesn’t matter if it’s Penn State or Penn or any of the Ivy League schools, they’re just tennis players.
“I think that kind of carried over to the other players a little bit. (The attitude of) it’s just another tennis match, let’s just go out there and beat these guys. We’ve played tennis for years. Sometimes, if you know who all these guys are, you get psyched out before you go out there to play. I think that was a benefit for us.”
On-court success helped the two overcome the homesickness and culture shock that comes with being a foreign student-athlete.
Nurmi and Haulos were lucky — they had two other Finland-natives in the Bona tennis program to help them out. Markus Arvaja was a junior and actually recruited Nurmi, while Johanna Pesola was a sophomore on the women’s team.
“It helped a lot, but it hurt my language,” Nurmi remembered. “I was talking all the time in Finnish. But it definitely helped having someone who knew exactly what you were going through.”

As sophomores, Nurmi and Haulos led the favored Bonnies to the A-10 title. Nurmi was the league’s Most Outstanding Player, and Bona advanced to the NCAA Tournament, where it lost to Texas A&M.
The next season, though, brought a disappointing third-place finish at A-10s.
That lit a fire under the two seniors-to-be.
“We knew what we had to do,” Haulos said.
The two took the Bonnies’ young roster (five sophomores) under their wing.
“I couldn’t ask for two better captains,” said sophomore John Corbin. “I truly became close to the two of them. They’re true leaders, they want to see you do well.”
Everything came together during this year’s spring break. While the basketball scandal erupted on campus, the Bonnies spent a week-long training trip in Florida.
“Since spring break, it’s been so great,” Haulos said. “We are so close as a team. We do all sorts of things together. It helps a lot — whenever we’re playing, everybody’s cheering everybody else on.”
This camaraderie fueled the Bonnies through the final portion of their schedule. The underclassmen wanted to win for Nurmi and Haulos, to send them out on top.
Nurmi and Haulos wanted to win for the underclassmen.
“We know how it feels, but they don’t know it yet,” Nurmi said. “We want to get it for them.”
A 4-2 win over Richmond clinched Bona’s second A-10 title and set up this weekend’s trip to Texas.
Saturday’s 5-0 loss to Texas does not diminish what Nurmi and Haulos have accomplished over the past four years.
They are the two most important tennis players in Bona history. They are the school’s most successful athletes in a generation.
“I know they’ve enjoyed being here and we’ve enjoyed having them here,” Bates said. “It’s sad to see them go, but I think they’ve left the program in a better situation than when they got here — which is something I think as a person, you want to do. Leave something better than when you got here.”
They leave with two Atlantic 10 championships and an office full of awards. They leave a legacy of success. They leave with college degrees.
What else can you ask for?
(Brian Moritz is a sports writer for The Times Herald.)