Tragedy casts pall over men's recent road trip

By Casey Michel     2/5/09 6:00pm

After seven straight victories, everyone on the men's tennis team knew a loss was inevitable. But no one knew that the first loss would come off of the tennis court. Not an hour before the Owls were slated to face Wake Forest University last Friday in Oxford, Miss., freshman Christian Saravia learned that his father had been killed in a car crash in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Stunned and saddened by the immediacy of the news, head coach Ron Smarr took Saravia to the nearest airport, and the native Guatemalan flew from Houston to his home in a matter of hours to be with his mother and brother, who are both still in the hospital.

All of a sudden, no one was in the mood to play a game that seemed to mean so little.

"Our hearts go out to him and his family," Smarr said. "At this juncture, tennis, on a scale of 100, is about a two. When anybody loses a father at that age, or anytime, is brutal."

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The game, however, must go on, and after a team meeting the Owls decided to keep its promise to play over the weekend. With heavy hearts, then- No. 17 Rice showed up against the Demon Deacons and against then-No. 37 University of Kentucky, but the squad's efforts ended in a pair of defeats.

The team's magical start had come to a shattering end. Gone were the dreams of a perfect season, gone was the top-20 ranking, and in only the second-week of their marathon seven-week road trip, gone were the lofty expectations of momentum for tomorrow's contest against No. 16 Louisiana State University.

When the squad travels to Baton Rouge, La., tomorrow, it will need to leave its struggles at the state line, because LSU will showcase a hardy singles lineup in front of a feverish home crowd. Leading the Tigers will be the best singles player the Owls have seen yet: Michael Venus, currently ranked second in the nation.

Rice's last matchup with LSU, in March 2008, ended pitifully for the host Owls as the lower-ranked Tigers came out on top 4-2. At No. 2, Venus bested then-junior Christoph Müller in three sets for the clinching point, despite the fact that Müller was a pair of match points away from clinching the match.

Now, the roles are reversed: LSU will be hosting and Rice will enter with a lower ranking. Despite last year's precedent, Smarr said he was still uncertain of his squad's chances.

"If you ever play LSU at LSU in anything, it's not a whole lot of fun," he said. "We've lost to LSU the last two times we played them . so maybe it's our turn to beat them."

For the Owls to truly have a shot at rebounding, they need their top hitter, junior Bruno Rosa, to shake out of the funk that has fallen on his game. Although he is currently ranked 26th in the country, five losses in his first seven matches have cut his confidence sharply.

"To tell you the truth, I just need some confidence," the Brazilian said. "I'm playing well, but I definitely need to correct some mistakes I'm having this semester. . The good thing about all of this is that [Müller] is more than ready to play No. 1. In a worst-case scenario, we have a great player at the top."

Against the 27th-ranked Demon Deacons, Rosa still held the No. 1 slot in singles, but after the Owls dropped all three doubles matches - the first time that has happened all season - Rosa rolled over against Cory Parr in a 6-1, 6-4 defeat. Müller put his squad on the board with a three-set win at No. 2, but losses by senior Toby Scheil and junior Chong Wang sealed Rice's fate and Wake Forest's 4-1 victory in the opening round of the National Team Indoors tournament.

If there was any comfort to be found from this loss, it was that Rice would no longer have to face the ninth-ranked University of Mississippi in the second round. The host Rebels had moved on to the second round at the expense of Kentucky, Rice's Sunday opponent in the consolation bracket.

But it turned out that whatever comfort the Owls felt in facing the Wildcats was short-lived. Although Rice took the doubles point, the team saw Kentucky - which Smarr predicted would soon land in the top 15 - take the lead with successes against Rosa and Wang. Müller grabbed a straight-set win over Brad Cox, his eighth-straight win to start the season, and freshman Sam Garforth-Bles earned a 7-5, 6-4 triumph at No. 5. Yet losses by Scheil and freshman Isamu Tachibana sent the Owls home without a win.

Typically, these losses would have shaken the team, leading to questions and a possible reshuffling of the lineup. But with Saravia in mind, tennis has taken a backseat to life off of the courts.

"We're going to stay close to him, make sure he stays busy, and he'll play tennis when he feels like it," Smarr said. "[The situation] puts everything in perspective. It can happen to anybody. On the turn of a dime, your life changes."

Rosa reiterated the team's solidarity in support of their teammate, noting that the notion of family is not limited solely to blood.

"You can't say too much, you can't do too much in this moment," Rosa said. "We not only lost a team member . but we also lost a family member.

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