Cal Poly Men’s Tennis Opens 2024 Season Friday at New Mexico

Friday, January 19

Albuquerque, NM

2 P.M.

University of New Mexico

Cal Poly Men’s Tennis Opens 2024 Season Friday at New Mexico

1/18/2024 12:13:00 PM | Men's Tennis

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — After a long offseason of training, Cal Poly men's tennis will officially open its 2024 season Friday on the road against New Mexico.

The Mustangs will face the Lobos at 2 p.m. PT Friday in Albuquerque. They will then stay there to take on East Tennessee State Saturday at 1 p.m. PT. Live stats and video will be available for fans to watch for the match against the Lobos on Friday. Links to those can be found on the schedule page.

Cal Poly returns its top four singles players from last season and six players overall. They also get back all three of their top doubles pairings from last year. Five of those returners are guys who earned All-Big West honors last season.

Those include senior Noah Berry, who earned First Team honors in singles and Second Team honors in doubles after going a team-leading 11-6 at the No. 1 singles spot and 10-9 in doubles. Berry been named First Team All-Big West in singles in each of his first three seasons and is the fourth player in program history to be named First Team All-Conference at least three times. He heads into his senior season with a career dual match singles record of 34-17, which ranks tied for fourth best in program history.

Joe Leather returns for his senior season coming off a junior year in which he earned Second Team All-Big West honors in singles after going 8-10 at the No. 2 spot in the lineup.

The other three returners who earned All-Conference honors last year are senior Fernando Fonseca, senior Colter Smith, and junior Bastiaan Westsrate, all three of whom earned All-Big West honors in doubles last year.

The Mustangs welcome six newcomers to this year's roster, five freshmen and one transfer.

The Lobos are coming off a 2023 season in which they finished with a 15-6 overall record and 6-0 regular season Mountain West record. They ultimately fell to Utah State in the semifinals of the Mountain West Tournament. They are headlined by the return of last year's Mountain West Player of the Year in Arda Azarka, who was 14-5 in singles play.

East Tennessee State has already played two matches this season, dropping both to No. 15 Wake Forest and Vanderbilt. In 2023, they were 12-14 overall and 5-2 in SoCon play, winning the conference tournament to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Following this week's matches, the Mustangs will get ready for their first two home matches of the season Feb. 3 against LMU and Feb. 4 against San Diego State at Mustang Tennis Complex.