men’s tennis ends better than it started

Rutt won his last four singles matches to finish with a team-best 8-5 mark He led the Mules with 19 combined wins for the year.

The 2008-09 Muhlenberg men’s tennis season opened back on September 14 when the Mules hosted Elizabethtown and two other teams in a tournament. Muhlenberg went 2-6 in head-to-head matches against the Blue Jays.

More than seven months later, the Mules finished their campaign on the same courts against Elizabethtown. This time, they fared much better, winning 6-3 to end the year on a three-match winning streak.

With no seniors playing, the Mules showed they have a promising future. They also showed the difference between the conferences the two schools play in. Elizabethtown (12-4) went undefeated in the Commonwealth Conference regular season and lost in the tournament final. Muhlenberg (6-7) finished in seventh place in the Centennial Conference.

The Mules won two of three close doubles matches, with the normal No. 3 team of junior Matt Kral and sophomore Wayne Mitchel moving up to No. 2 and winning 8-6. Sophomore John Osborne and freshman Michael Robbins won for the first time as a team, 9-8 (7-4) at No. 3. The No. 1 doubles match also went to a tiebreak.

The singles matches weren’t as close. Kral, Mitchel and freshman Jordan Rutt all won by comfortable margins, and junior Yoni Farber was victorious in straight sets against a player who beat him 8-3 in September.
Click here for box score.