TROY, Ill. - The Webster University men's tennis team dropped its third straight match here Saturday afternoon at Triad High School as the Gorloks fell 7-0 to NCAA Division II foe McKendree University.
With the setback, Webster falls to 4-9-1 overall on the season, while McKendree improves to 7-5 on the year.
Saturday's match was played using Division II rules as the three doubles match counted as one point with a team needing to win two of three doubles matches to earn the point.
The shutout loss marked the fifth time this season that the Gorloks had been blanked with two of those coming against Division II foes - McKendree and Maryville University.
Webster played Saturday's match without four of its usual players, including three of them who are members of Webster's soccer team that played at home on Saturday against Eureka.
Without those four players, the Gorloks were forced to not have enough players at No. 3 doubles and No. 5 and No. 6 singles and that resulted in McKendree getting wins by default at those three spots.
In the two doubles matches that were played, McKendree won both of them by scores of 6-0 at the No. 1 spot and 6-2 at the No. 2 spot, which was played on Saturday by senior
Courtland Butler (St. Louis, Mo./McKinley) and sophomore
Parker Schaefer (Barnhart, Mo./Windsor).
With their three wins in doubles, McKendree earned the one point in doubles heading into singles play.
In singles play, the Gorloks won a total of 10 games in four singles matches.
At No. 1 singles, fifth-year senior
Riley Muren (O'Fallon, Mo./Illinois-Springfield) gave Julappagari Reedy some trouble as Reedy would post a hard-fought 6-2, 6-2 win, while Butler fell 6-2, 6-2 to Fabian Martinez at No. 3 singles.
The other two games in singles were won by freshman
Matthew Birchmeier (Swartz Creek, Mich./Flushing) at the No. 2 spot as he fell 6-1, 6-1 to Diego Castillo.
Schaefer would be shut out by identical 6-0, 6-0 scores at No. 4 singles by Griffin Brunner.
The Gorloks will close out the 2021 regular season on Sunday, April 18 with a 1 p.m. match in Oakland City, Ind., against Oakland City University.
