Rising Phoenix: Jack Curtis, Phoenix Victorious Again At UNCG
GREENSBORO – In the last road match of the 2024 regular season, the Elon men's tennis team captured a 5-2 victory at Greensboro against the UNCG Spartans on Wednesday night. Jack Curtis, a first year addition to the team, captured his 14th singles win, clinching at least a share of the most singles wins for the Phoenix in 2024.
"It feels great," Curtis said on leading the team in wins. "I definitely wasn't expecting it, but to be playing some good tennis and winning a lot of matches feels great. It means a lot."
After joining the team in January, flashes of Curtis' strong potential were transparent to head coach Michael Leonard early on. Before the season started, Leonard was impressed with the freshman and said Curtis could "really play."
The expectations for Curtis began relatively tempered, as they would for any freshman mid-year addition. In his first match at No. 15 ranked Wake Forest, Curtis was featured at the No. 6 singles spot. However, a singles win in Winston-Salem set Curtis off on a spectacular season, as he has tallied 14 singles and 13 doubles victories.
At UNCG Wednesday, Curtis started off the day with a 6-1 doubles win at the third position. Again pairing up with Oskar Antinheimo, the duo improved to 12-4, the most wins by a Phoenix doubles team this year. Elon was victorious in all three doubles matches, going up 1-0 against the Spartans.
"Winning the doubles point is always good," Curtis said. "I got broken in the first game but managed to win the rest of the set pretty comfortably so it was a good feeling, being able to convert that was pretty easy for me to go into singles."
Now playing in the No. 4 singles spot, Curtis squared off against UNCG's Christopher Johns for their singles clash. Johns was able to break Curtis's serve early, but the true freshman bounced back, taking the first set 6-3 and then sweeping the second 6-0. Curtis is now 2-0 at the No. 4 singles spot as he has advanced his way up Elon's lineup.
From an intriguing mid-year addition to a solidified weapon for the Phoenix, Curtis has found his groove and is building momentum by the match. Luckily for Elon and Leonard, it is coming right before the CAA Tournament.
"I think it gives [us] a lot of momentum," Curtis said. "We've won a lot of tight matches and we've lost a lot of tight matches to some close teams, so I think the win here today is going to give us a lot of confidence to play well on Friday."
'Rising Phoenix' is a new student-led initiative to cover Elon Athletics. Through innovative content creation and storytelling, Elon University students will have the opportunity to highlight the moments, people and events that make an impact, leveraging the athletic department's various web and social media platforms for distribution. Follow Rising Phoenix on Twitter (@EURisingPhoenix) and Instagram (@elonrisingphoenix). Interested in joining this initiative as a content creator (video, graphics, writing, storytelling, or more)? Contact Jacob Kisamore at [email protected].
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Oskar Antinheimo 6' 1" Sophomore
Jack Curtis 5' 10" Freshman
Oskar Antinheimo 6' 1" Sophomore
Jack Curtis 5' 10" Freshman
