Crunch Time for UEL

Seb Kay previews a playoff match for UEL Tennis against the University of Nottingham.

All eyes at UEL will be turned to their Men’s 1st Tennis team as they head into a playoff off match as they take on University of Nottingham at Lee Valley Tennis and Hockey.

With UEL men’s topping the Southern Premier division and Uni of Nottingham doing the same for the Northern division, sitting on the same amount of points, earned the right to square off and fight for one final promotion match against Bath University.

Continuing Form

UEL will be hoping their season’s fine form continues during the post season, as they finished the league undefeated, only dropping 2 points coming from a draw against LSE.

Other than that blip, every other matches have been won in convincing fashion either 12-0 or 10-2 so they will be looking for a team performance such as these.

The main threats in the UEL team lie in the hands of Patrick Eichler and Jared Linzell who have won 21 and 18 matches respectively and only have one loss each, at the hands of national tier Stirling, showing the forceful performances of the doubles pairing.

Change Up

UEL are without their 1st team captain, Lewis Thompson who is nursing a rib injury and is out for three weeks, so would also miss the promotion match up next week if UEL were to win.

Replacing him is American masters degree student Michael Elortegui whose sole 1st team match came at Stirling in the cup.

However, with little first team experience this year, he is upbeat about the forthcoming match:

“I’m ready to step on court and fill in for Lewis (Thompson), if I go out there and do what I can do, then hopefully I can add an extra rubber to our total.”

In other team news, it’s usual faces for the other three spots, with Michael Suleau heading the pack for UEL, followed by Patrick Eichler and Jared Linzell.

Eichler feels confident with the team:

“If we can carry the form from our season into this match, I’m confident we can beat them, we need to be mentally switched on from the first point until after the last point is won.”

 

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