Dear Slug Fans

Our second outing of the season was the Bronco Classic hosted by Santa Clara University. What and event! Stanford, Cal, U of Washington, Boise State, BYU, Oregon U, UC Santa Barbara, U Nevada Reno were some of the top teams involved. With all these great teams our players stood tall and made the coaches very proud! We were able to get 10 players into the draws with Jared Kamel representing in the top flight. Jared drew 5th seed Falko Huttenberger from USF in the opening round and responded with a 7-6,6-4 victory. In the second round he extended one to the nations top recruits, Kalim Stewart of Cal, to three sets and showed he will be a force in the top part of our lineup.

In the B flight transfer Jeffery Fong defeated Vladimir Pino of Oregon before falling to David Chu of U of Washington. Jeffery again showed the capacity to compete with top flight players off the ground and is working on expanding his weapons. Freshman Brian Pybas excelled in his part of the draw defeating Kazumi Negishi of UCSD and Andy Muesse of Sonoma State to advance to the quarter finals where he faced Stanford’s Chris Rassmussen. Brian was up to the task in the first set controlling most points and blending solid offense and defense in winning the set 6-3. After a close second set to Rassmussen the third was a battle all the way before Brian lost 6-4 despite breaking three times!

In the C flight the Slugs were led by the efforts of Soph Max Ortiz who won three quality matches to advance to the quarter finals. Max defeated Stephen Weichert of Oregon, Gabe Kanzelmeyer of Nevada, and Victor Medina of Fresno Pacific before falling to flight winner Michael Reiser of UC Davis. This tournament marked a breakout for Max as he was solid throughout. The other Slug winner in this flight was Ilya Gendelman who defeated Guerlin Smith of Nevada.

This event included a back draw where we played many quality matches. Kian Fattahi, Julian Sunn, Max Liberty-Point and Marc Vertabedian all performed very well.

This is the last official event for the fall so it is time to go back to the drawing board and set the course for the Spring. Each day our leadership grows and the group pushes each other to new heights. Bryce and I am happy and proud of the growth and development so far and look forward to continuing this process.

Thanks again for your support and interest in these fine young men.

Coach Hansen and Parmelly