Jomby's Journal: Kentucky Tennis Falls To No. 29 Notre Dame in Regional Championship

Playing their first major tournament of the year, the University of Kentucky Men’s tennis team lost in the ITA regional final yesterday against No. 29 Notre Dame.

On Friday afternoon UK easily defeated the No. 45 BYU Cougars, 4-0, in 97 minutes exactly. The same day, Notre Dame had a battle against No.39 Minnesota and ended up winning their semi final 4/3 in a match that lasted more than 4 hours.

The final between UK and Notre Dame started at 5:00 pm Saturday. The Wildcats didn’t have a bad day in doubles with a lot of opportunities, but they for sure didn’t start this final the right way as the Fighting Irish won the doubles point with a win on court 1 and 2.

The duo Niels Ellefsen/ Ruyji Hirooka gave the cats an early win on court 3 with a 6-2 win.

Tom Jomby and Kevin Lai lost 6-4 on court 1.

It all came down to court 2 where Beck Pennington and Alejandro Gomez were up 5-3 and even had two match points to give UK the double points. Unable to close the match, Notre Dame came back 5-5 and UK lost the deciding tiebreaker.

When I was listening to Cedric Kauffmann during his speech between doubles and singles, I had the feeling this day could have been a special day for us. For his second year as our head coach, he was looking forward to send his players to their fifth consecutive National Indoor appearance. He told us to fight for every point. He reminded us that this was “ OUR HOUSE “ and that we should try to play with the crowd. No need to tell you how pumped we were and ready to go for the single actions — I even decided to wear new black shoes for the occasion as we decided to wear all black for singles, but ended up switching during the first set because they were hurting my feet.

Even though Notre Dame had won the doubles point, I think they knew it would be really tough to come out here and beat us.

On court 4, Wildcat Jerry Lopez lost 6-3, 6-2 and Notre Dame was up 2-0 overall in the match.

On court 1, No. 68 Tom Jomby beat No. 21 Greg Andrew in close sets, winning both in tiebreakers, 6-5, 6-5.

Playing on court one in front of all those people was so much fun. This was by far my best match of the year so far and I was glad to be able to come back in the second set when I was down 4-1. The Notre Dame players were trash talking every time I made a mistake, and they screamed and argued every single call I made. I was kind of happy to be able to silence them by winning my match in two sets.

The Wildcats tied the match up at 2-2 as Alejandro Gomez defeated Hagar in three sets, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2.

No.5 Grant Roberts destroyed Wyatt McCoy 6-0, 6-3. Here is a picture of Lexington native Grant Roberts in action:

UK went up 3-2 in the overall score after Grant’s win.

Beck Pennington had the opportunity to close out the match for the Cats. Only a sophomore and already playing No. 2, he had big responsibilities on his shoulders. He won the first set 6-3, but Bandy from Notre Dame fought all the way to win 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

The match came down to No. 6 singles where UK senior Ryuji Hirooka was playing against Notre Dame freshman Covalschi. The atmosphere was really intense in the stands as players started screaming and yelling any kind of nicknames they could find to pump up their teammate. In the first set Ryuji couldn’t handle his nerves. He was making unusual errors and was missing too many forehands as Notre Dame took the first set 6-3, but Hirooka found his way to bounce back, saving a match point and winning the second set in a tiebreaker, 6-5.

Ex-UK tennis head coach and legend Dennis Emery, Mitch Barnhart, UK Athletic Director and the whole crowd believed in the Cats and in Ruyji.

Personally I really thought we had it. Never I was thinking about getting upset by the Irish at any time to tell you how much I trusted my teammate Ryuji.

The match came down to a final set. The scene was really unbelievable. Imagine 2 players each of them sitting in their bench with 3 coaches, yeah you read it right, 3 COACHES just for them giving them advices. On the other side of the courts you had the players ready to jump out of their sit at every single occasion their player would win a point. I mean only in college tennis you will see that.

“ Yoshi “ as we call him in the team was up 3/1 and even had an opportunity to be up 4/1. There was a legit Davis cup atmosphere at the Boone Tennis center and the crowd was yelling every single time Covalski from Notre Dame would miss shot, even after missing a first serve to try to put pressure on him. But Notre Dame showed some heart and won 5 straight games to win 6/4 and send Notre Dame to the National Indoor in Houston Texas.

Personally, I have to give Notre Dame the credit. They gave a great team effort, but man that hurts.

After the match, Coach Kauffmann said it was a tough loss. Not a lot of teams have come down here to Lexington and upset us. We are not going to be a part of the best 16 teams in the country and that’s why we took a step back today.

Fun fact: next time UK will play will be at Notre Dame for a rematch, as the Wildcats will travel to South Bend on February 2 at 2:00 p.m.

Go Cats.