In the three-day Dartmouth Shootout the Big Green hosted Middlebury College, Williams College, Amherst College, Army, Marist College and Stony Brook University. The tournament began on Friday and continued through the weekend, with most finals taking place on Sunday.
"We might have started off a little slow, but we really fought hard throughout the tournament," Kevin Cox '13 said. "Coach [Christopher] Drake has really emphasized the importance of always competing, so we knew we had to keep working all weekend, and I think we finished off the tournament really strong."
The tournament began with doubles play and although De Bot and Ghorbani were the only Big Green athletes to come out on top in their flight, four out of five Dartmouth doubles pairs made it to the finals of their respective flights, with the fifth earning a victory in the consolation round. Doubles play concluded on Saturday morning with Dartmouth finishing 11-4 overall.
"In doubles, we played pretty well and won one of the flights, which was exciting," Drake said. "At the same time, there are a lot of things in doubles that we will be working on. We've done well despite not having had a ton of practice, and we will have to keep improving on some of the skills, the positioning and even doubles knowledge."
Singles play began on Saturday for the Big Green. Just as he did in doubles, De Bot won his singles flight as well.
"Obviously, I was really happy with my results and with how the team did," De Bot said. "This was my first time playing at home, and it was really great to get to play in front of a home crowd. All of our guys were there and some other Dartmouth kids came out. It made a real, tangible difference."
Andrew Malizia '12 was the runner-up in the E flight, only losing in the final match of his draw. Team captains Curtis Roby '11 and Stephen Greif '11 both finished in third place in the A and C flights, respectively. Three other Big Green players Ghorbani, Cox and Mike Jacobs '13 dropped their first matches of the tournament, but came back to win the consolation bracket.
"I am really proud of our guys, especially for the way that they played on Sunday," Drake said. "These tournaments are a lot of matches. Most of our guys are playing seven really physical matches in three days. On Sunday, we were able to win seven out of nine of those matches, most of which were comeback victories. Our guys were able to play when they were worn down and tired. That's impressive."
According to Cox, the team's ability to maintain its high intensity and its ability to come from behind stems from the mental strength that the team has been building up this year.
"I feel like we really fought through some matches," Cox said. "We won a lot of matches that went to the third set and to super tiebreakers. We were able to come back from first-set losses and were constantly fighting to win every set and every point. Our mental toughness which is something that Drake has stressed has definitely improved since last year."
Five of the Dartmouth men will be back in action in two weeks at the ITA Regional Championship in New Haven, Conn., but the rest of the team will not have another competition until the Harvard Invitational at the end of the month.
"We're going to take a couple of days off," De Bot said. "Then, we will be able to come back and work hard in practice. We want to be able to make small improvements everyday, improving our strokes, our intensity. Hopefully our whole team will be healthy. We worked really hard in the preseason and have continued to work these past couple of weeks, and [the Harvard Invitational] will be one last time to see where we are at before we go into the offseason."
Cox agreed, adding that the Invitation will be a good test as the team will face other Ivy League opponents.
"And plus, it's always fun to beat up on Harvard, so we're going to do our best to do that," Cox said.
