After an unfortunate weekend in Iowa City and Lincoln for the Jays men’s tennis team, they can be seen practicing even harder on the courts.  In Iowa and Lincoln the men had two unlucky losses, 0-7 to the University of Iowa Hawwkeyes and 6-1 to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Cornhuskers.

With their No. 1 singles player, senior Billy Paluch, injuring himself during one of his matches in Iowa City and possibly being out for the season, fellow senior Ryan Norman had to step up and take his place in their matches against Nebraska last Sunday.

“I wouldn’t say that I was playing to the best of my abilities with respect to individual shots. Maybe I’m just too critical of myself, but I pulled it all together to play some of the smartest and most efficient tennis I’ve ever played,” Norman said.

Norman has just become the second player in the past twenty years of Creighton men’s tennis history to take down Nebraska at the No. 1 singles spot. He’ll be joining his head coach, Tom Lilly, who also overpowered the Cornhuskers’ No. 1 singles player back in 1993.

Seeing as the team has the potential to work harder and achieve more even with their top player out for the season, Lilly said he still believes that these young men can take on another top 10 team as long as the players believe it as well..

“Every match will be much tougher with our top player out, but that should make everyone work even harder to get the results we want,” Lilly said.

Every match played this past weekend, whether it was against Iowa or the Huskers, was an extremely close one. The Jays weren’t crushed or overtly killed by their opponents. They played their hearts out and will come back even better prepared knowing where they made their mistakes.

“I think this weekend showed us our potential, but also showed how we need to improve on closing out tight matches,” senior Sean Mathison said.

With many of their sets coming down to a 7-5, 6-4 loss and not being able to finish them off, they leave the weekend strong hearted and with a will to dominate.