Men's Tennis Hosts Annual Varsity/Alumni Friends Match

The men’s tennis team took a break from competitive action this weekend as it took part in the annual Varsity/Alumni Friends match, which took place Saturday at the Dick Savitt Tennis Center.

The event featured food, fun and some tennis for friends of the men’s tennis program, as well as competitive tennis for some of the recent graduates of the team.

“I think it was a really good affair,” said head coach Bid Goswami. “We had a lot of people. We split it up into a friends outing and an alumni match. The friends outing are guys who are supporters of our team but not necessarily Columbia alumni, and some of them play at the tennis center. We put the current members on the court and depending on how many people there are we play singles or doubles, and we get all those guys to play.”

After the friends outing, the team turns to the alumni match, which features both recent graduates and old timers, many of whom are looking to see if they can beat the current members of the varsity team.

“As I have thought over the years,” said the head coach, now in his 27th season at the helm of the men’s tennis program, “it was a very low key affair. We had Mark Clemente [CC ’08] there and they wanted to play more doubles than singles so we had a lot of doubles matches which worked out well since there were a lot of people there.”

The alumni came from as far away as Louisiana for the event, and there were some competitive matches that took place.

“Rob Kresberg [former women’s tennis coach] played [freshman] Ekin Sezgen,” said Goswami, “and Rob still plays a lot of tournaments, and is ranked internationally, and he likes to compete so he played a set against Ekin, while the rest of the matches were doubles. We had a team from the early ’70s, before I got here, who play in 55-and-over national tournaments and they are avid tennis players so they wanted to play a couple of the guys, and they looked pretty sharp, but of course, here the ball comes back a little faster.”

Overall the event was a relaxing time for the current players to connect with some of the alumni of the program.

“Overall it was very nice and the spirit was very nice,” said Goswami.

The Lions will be back competing when they travel to Texas for their annual spring break training trip.