View and download the entire issue of ATR 64 – January 2018 Vol 19 No 1
Bolstered by transfer students from Clemson, Oklahoma, and Virginia Commonwealth, San Diego State’s two NCAA Division One tennis teams embark this month on the 96th year of Aztec tennis.
Led by head coaches Peter Mattera and Gene Carswell, the 19 student athletes (8 women and 11 men from 10 countries) are looking to regain national rankings after difficult seasons last year.
COMPETITOR: Joel Popov of Finland helps lead 2018 men.
“We’re going to have a lot of depth,” said Carswell, “and it’s going to take the whole group, It’s going to take the whole team.
“I’m optimistic about our chances and the best part about all this is our season will culminate here with our conference championship at San Diego State. So that’s the goal. The goal is to win the conference championship.”
For Mattera, in his 24th year as head coach, the 2018 season looks promising.
“We’ve had a really, really wonderful fall,” he said. “We have four new players on an eight-person team, so half of it is a new team We have two really good new freshmen, both from California,” he said.
The new and returning teammates bonded well over the fall, he said, suggesting a cohesive group that will fight to claim matches for each other.
Mattera pointed to a series of ranked opponents — Dartmouth, USC, St Mary’s and UC Berkeley among them —lined up for top matches,
Aztec Berta Acero of Spain lines up a backhand.
“About 80% of it is at home,” he said.
“We’ve got a schedule that gives us a lot of good opportunities to get some nationally ranked wins, get back in there. We’ve got a lot of great home matches so we don’t have to travel which usually increases your chances for success.”
The Aztec men, meanwhile, are traveling extensively, visiting Alabama, Mississippi, Nevada, and Idaho, as well as Malibu, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Fresno.
Carswell described the schedule as a way to toughen his players for greater competitiveness. He called the result a way “to get us tougher and to get us closer together, I think, as a group.” By season’s end, he forecast, the squad would be playing at a level well within the quality of top 75 teams.
In Tuscaloosa, the Aztecs will face Alabama’s Crimson Tide, coached by George Husack, the San Diego State team captain in the 1991 season. He later coached Santa Clara for five years and served as a top assistant at USC before moving to the SEC In 2015.
Husack was a 1989 teammate of Tole Marinkovic (see box, page 2).
The 2018 women are Berta Acero, a sophomore from Logrono, Spain, Magda Aubets, a junior transfer from Virginia Commonwealth, from Lleida, Spain; Jana Buth, a senior from Kaiserslautern, Germany; Paola Diaz de Regules, a senior from Mexico City; Jennifer Moinard. a junior transfer from Clemson from St Jean De Monts, France; Abigail Mulbarger, a freshman from Manteca, CA; Nnena Nadozie, a freshman from Los Angeles, and Mia Smith, a sophomore from Tunbridge Wells, UK.
The men are Santiago Cevallos, a senior from Queretaro, Mexico; Daniel de la Torre, a sophomore and his brother Raul de la Torre, a junior, both from Calexico, CA; Sander Gjoels-Andersen, a junior from Klampenborg, Denmark; Rafael Gonzalez Almazan, a sophomore from Madrid; David Hough, a sophomore from Traralgon, Australia; Jan Kirchhoff,, a freshman from Berlin; Ignacio Martinez, a freshman from Weston, FL.; Nicholas Mitchell, a sophomore from Ojai, CA; Joel Popov, a sophomore from Tampere, Finland, and Arnaud Restifo, a sophomore transfer from Oklahoma from Nice, France.
Jeff Thomsen is assistant men’s coach, Larry Willens volunteer men’s coach, and Nico Vinel assistant women’s coach.
