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Rafael Gonzalez Almazan
Rafael Gonzalez Almazan
AZTEC VETERAN: Rafael Gonzalez Almazan, a senior from Spain. Both teams are returning for an unusual season. ATR photo.

San Diego State’s two tennis teams, taking pandemic precautions, are poised to play a 99th year of Aztec tennis, which began in 1922 with the formation of an all-men’s tennis club.

Aztec women’s coach Peter Mattera described his team’s schedule of 21 matches as “very tentative.”

“Like everybody else playing sports right now it’s all subject to COVID. It’s as good as I know right now (Jan 14),” Mattera said.

“We’re hoping we get to play all those matches. You’ve got to stay flexible. If either our team or the other team was to have a significant amount of COVID cases and they couldn’t field their team, then we would certainly try to be flexible and move the date.”

Mattera predicted a successful season.

“If we’re able to stay out of COVID problems we have a very strong team. The group that was coming back, they’re all a known element. It’ll be interesting to see how they’ve been able to maintain both their tennis and also their conditioning levels.”

Mattera has maintained contact through zoom meetings ever since last year, when play was halted by most schools and conferences within the NCAA.

“We haven’t seen them since the second week of March, and so they’ve been hitting and training to the best of their ability.”

Adding strength to the team, Mattera said, is the fact that all but two of its players are retuning from last year’s Aztec squad.

“There’s two new-comers, Regina Pitts, a transfer from Seton Hall, from Los Angeles,” Mattera said, “and Alexandria Von Tersch Pohrer, who is the only one that was here during the fall semester. She was living in the dorms and she got to practice some and train a little bit.”

Their teammates are Julia Jordan, Alicia Melosch, Abigail Mulbarger and Nnena Nadozie, all of California; Tamara Arnold of Switzerland, Agustina Rimoldi Godoy of Argentina, and Cecile Morin of France.