Entering his sophomore season with the men’s tennis team, Danny Ursomanno, is ready to help his team bring a long awaited Championship trophy home to CSI. He finished his rookie season with a 9-2 record in singles play and has worked to be even more successful this season.
Follow Ursomanno and his team as they go through their spring training trip, practices, struggles, team bonding and bringing the Championship title back to CSI!
Ursomanno will make periodical contributions to his blog, giving insiders a taste of what Dolphins tennis is all about.
Here, the sophomore speaks of the team’s hopes for the season as they get ready for their spring break trip to Florida:
Our Men’s and Women’s tennis teams are traveling to Orlando, Florida on March 16 for a four day stint to test our talent and determination against some of the best competition we will face all year. Our team has a slate of matches set up against UMass, Lawrence, and Bethel College while the girls are challenging Huntington and Bethel College as well. This trip serves as a great beginning for our 2012 campaign and for a solid foundation for us to build on in hopes of reaching our highly coveted outcome, a CUNY Championship.
“Florida is always a great time and something that unites the team, brings us closer like a family, and gives us a chance to face tougher competition that we might not see up here in CUNY,” said four year senior and staple of the Men’s team, Riad Hamai. Our team lost four of its six starters from last year but we are not considering it a re-building year, but instead the year in which we can grasp the CUNY Championship which has eluded us and our coach Paul Ricciardi during his five year tenor.
“There is a good morale and focus with this team and with each day we get more motivated and are doing everything within our power to make sure we don’t come up short again this year. We have lost significant players from last year but retained enormous talent as identified in the trio of Zikos, Hamai, and Ursomanno. In addition, we have welcomed a Swedish prospect, Filip Bubalo, who we are expecting big things from this season, as well as being fortunate enough to have attracted three freshman Austin Kapentanakis, Dima Vituk, and Oscar Wu; who all will play an instrumental part in the team’s success.”
The feeling around our team is to continually be growing and improving with each passing day, gaining invaluable experience along the way, and at the end of the season having all of us playing our best tennis in order to be the ones holding the trophy. Challenges and obstacles will most definitely arise but our team with each passing day is growing closer as a unit and more mentally tough and will be able to conquer it all. I definitely see the different attitude and renewed sense of heart and competitiveness within the team and believe the unified mission and belief in one another could put our team over the top and have us crowned champions when everything is said and done.
