Davidson Teams Wrap Up Home Schedule

I was able to take in the last men's and women's home matches of the 2008 season last weekend at Davidson College.

On Friday, the women hosted Wofford and had a rather easy time with them winning the match 6-1. I was able to catch the doubles play and watched as the ones and threes each won by a score of 8-4. The twos had a much tougher time, losing 8-1. The Wildcats took the doubles point although they wouldn't need it as they went 5-1 the rest of the way. The result would be a lot different on Saturday.

The women and the men hosted Furman on Saturday. The women started the day and they were never really able to get on track, losing the match 7-0. The Lady Wildcats did end the season 17-5 and 7-2 in the Southern Conference. I only caught the last few matches they played this season, but they are a very competitive team and are fun to watch. There are some tough teams in the SoCon, so 7-2 is a nice conference result.

The men gave the Paladins a little tougher match, but they also lost by a score of 5-2. I was treated to an interesting match at number four singles. Walker Lyons of Davidson was matched up against Chris Motes. During the doubles match I noticed that a Furman player was wearing a Georgia Bulldogs hat. When I brought it up to the people around me I learned the player was Chris Motes, a transfer from Georgia, last year's national champions. I watched a number of Georgia matches last year, including the national championship win over Illinois, and I never remember seeing Motes play. Obviously the transfer made a lot of sense as he was going to have a tough time playing on that team last year and this year too, as they are still loaded and number three in the country.

As the first set was moving along between Motes and Lyons, Motes started losing his cool in the tight match. Motes was up a break and then started getting frustrated when Lyons stepped up his game. Motes became very animated as he lost his cool and began to shout and make hand gestures. At one point he waved his racket around like it was a fly swatter, obviously disappointed in his performance. When I talked some members of the Furman team during this episode they told me this was a standard routine with Motes. One of the guys even said, " it's Motes, we just learn to deal with it." Nice. Lyons went on to take the first set in a tiebreaker and then breezed through set two, winning the match 7-6, 6-1. Motes was a bit of a distraction, but not a big one. The rest of the Furman players stayed focused, taking four of the six singles. The only other Davidson win was at number six where Scott Myers beat Sawyer Duncan 6-4, 6-0.

The Wildcats finished the season 14-7 and 5-4 in the Southern Conference. Just like the women, they are an entertaining team to watch. They open play tomorrow in the Southern Conference tournament in Charleston, SC.

Time.