By Roscoe Nance
These are high times for the Morgan State men’s tennis program. The Bears captured their first-ever MEAC championship last spring, and they backed up that title by winning the HBCU National Championship earlier this month.
That’s heady stuff for a program that has been a whipping boy in the tennis world over the years. But it’s nothing more than Bears coach Matthew Townes anticipated when he took over in January 2015. The Bears had only won four of 16 matches the previous year, but that didn’t faze Townes. He looked at the roster and only saw three scholarship athletes. That let him know that he could build the program in short order, since he wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time turning over the roster.
“I started looking for the best players around the world,” Townes said, adding that he recognized most American tennis players simply weren’t interested in attending an HBCU. “International players are good enough, and they don’t care about if a school is an HBCU or not, as long as they have an opportunity to play and they can make the grades.”
Townes figured that with his background and coaching experience – he had been a developmental and high-performance coach for 15 years, during which he developed several college athletes, some of whom turned pro – his recruits would get better sooner than later.
“I knew recruiting might be the only hiccup initially,” he said. “But I knew whatever players I did find, whatever level they came in at, I could get them to another level. That’s what I had to sell to my athletes.”
Townes’ sales pitch was, “This is a brand new opportunity for us. I just came in. I want to bring you in. I want to do something special. I can make you a great scholarship offer. I can make you a better player. Let’s go to work.”
The Bears reached the title match of the 2018 MEAC Championship before losing, and the foundation was in place.
“Starting this season winning the HBCUs is pretty good,” Townes said. “It shows we didn’t have a drop-off. Even though we lost a lot of players, we didn’t lose in the caliber of athletes we have at Morgan. We still have more things to accomplish, goals as a team and personal goals. It’s going in the right direction. We haven’t hit our peak. The next two or three years there are a lot of improvements to make, which is saying a lot considering where we are right now.”
Those goals include advancing beyond the first round of the NCAA Championships, having a singles player ranked in the top 75 in the country and a doubles team ranked in the top 25.
Advancing beyond the first round isn’t as simple as it may sounds. It’s a process that involves regular-season scheduling in addition to winning.
“We know that in order to achieve that goal, it’s going to take a better regular-season performance,” Townes said. “We’re going to have to have a regional ranking so if we’re blessed enough to win our conference again we don’t have to face such a tough seed in the first round (the Bears lost to No. 4 Wake Forest 5-0 in the 2019 NCAAs). We understand where the MEAC is right now with the NCAA. Our nonconference schedule has to be tight. We have to make sure we handle the schools that we need to handle.”
The challenge in that is getting an opportunity to handle those schools. As the Bears’ quality of play has improved, bigger programs have begun to shy away from playing them.
“When we go and play non-HBCUs, Morgan hasn’t had a history of winning,” Townes said. “A lot of schools for the past 10 or 15 years have been used to beating up on Morgan. As they’re beating up on Morgan, it’s easy to schedule them. But when you start beating those schools, they don’t necessarily return the same courtesy and say we’re going to continue playing you. There are a few schools on our schedule because they are local and coaches understand. But every year we win, the more it presents a challenge getting those schools on our schedule.”
Townes says Morgan State is close to cracking the singles and doubles rankings he is aiming for. He says Cem Cemerturk, a transfer from Fresno State originally from Turkey, and senior captain Nihit Rawal of India, are pushing the envelope. Rawal was Most Outstanding Player at the MEAC Championships.
Rawal and fellow senior Shrey Gupta, also from India, also won the Loyola Marymount Invitational last week. Both were undefeated in singles and doubles play.
“We can do that at Morgan,” Townes said. “In the next two or three years, based on the recruiting calendar, I believe we will have several players in that category.”
Townes says the key to Morgan State’s success going forward will be creating depth. The Bears currently have a seven-man squad. Townes says adding another player would be beneficial for a number of reasons.
“In Div. I, to have a team of seven is pretty good because the scholarship money isn’t very good,” he said. “If you can have a full team plus one, that’s good. But I think it’s important to have another player on the team. We need eight guys on the team. That helps as far as injury prevention and it helps push the other guys. If you know there ae only five or six guys on the team, the motivation is a little different because you know you’re going to play.
“If there are eight guys on the team, somebody isn’t going to play. There is a little added motivation for those who find themselves in that situation. To push that internal competition, I would like to add an eighth guy. In order for us to reach our goals, we need internal competition. Internal competition isn’t talked about in individual sports, but it’s really crucial in a lot of development. College tennis doesn’t leave a lot of room for development. You get better through match play, so you need obviously to have good practice partners who can get you better a lot faster.”