Photo by: Tony Leon/ActionWestPhotography.com

CLAREMONT, Calif. – The Whittier College Men's Tennis team had a tough match-up Saturday against No. 4 Claremont-M-S falling 9-0 at the Biszantz Family Tennis Center.

The Purple & Gold see their two-match winning streak come to a close as they drop to 6-9, 1-2 SCIAC.  CMS on the other hand improves to 20-1, 2-0 SCIAC.

Whittier fell behind early 3-0 after doubles.  Thomas Koszowski (Denver, OC) and Maxwell Koszowski (Denver, CO) battled at the top spot but fell 8-5.  At No. 2, Pim Van Der Veer (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Matt Yanuck (Studio City, Calif.) started off strong but couldn't sustain it as they fell 8-3.

Then at No. 3, the most consistent duo on the season Chris Palacio (El Centro, Calif.) and Jesse Eccles (Queenstown, New Zealand) would go down 8-4 giving the Stags an early lead.  In singles, the Poets fell in straights at 1-6.  The most success came from Eccles at No. 4 who after falling 6-1 in the opening set battled back in the second only to drop 7-5.  Palacio had similar luck at No. 6 dropping 6-1 early but showed some grit in the second getting broken late at 6-4.        

Whittier returns to the courts this weekend with two road matches.  They begin with a match-up against Cal Lutheran on Friday, April 12 beginning at 3:00pm before traveling out to Redlands the very next day, Saturday, April 13 with doubles set to begin at 10:00am.