SAN ANTONIO – The UTSA men's tennis team will open its 2021 season on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the UTSA Tennis Center, hosting Rice.
The Roadrunners enter the second season under coach Sergey Avdeyev, who took over UTSA in 2020 after helping build Old Dominion into a league power as their assistant coach.
UTSA went 5-6 last year before the season was cancelled, earning wins over Louisiana-Lafayette, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Laredo CC and Loyola Marymount.
UTSA returns several standouts from last year, including senior Kai Breitbach (Kaarst, Germany), Joao Ceolin (Palotina, Brazil), junior Javier Gonzalez (San Fernando, Chile), freshman Kaito Nishihara (Austin, Texas), Juri Reckow (Hamburg, Germany), Javier Rodriguez (Trujillo, Peru) and Sebastian Rodriguez (Trujillo, Peru).
UTSA welcomes freshmen Slava Gulin (Moscow, Russia) and Garrett Skelly (The Woodlands, Texas) for 2021.
Gonzalez enters 2021 riding the momentum of his performance at the ITA National Summer Championship, a year after posting five singles wins in an abbreviated season.
Reckow and Sebastian Rodriguez earned All-Conference USA honors last year, with Rodriguez named Freshman of the Year and second-team all-league. Reckow went 9-0 in his 10 singles matches last year, including 4-0 in the No. 2 spot and 5-0 in the No. 3 spot. Reckow went 15-6 in singles in 2019.
Javier Rodriguez, who transferred from Purdue for the 2019 season, went 17-5 in singles in his debut season, earning all-conference accolades.
- UTSA -
