Last year at a Sac State tennis match, bystanders watched as Sylvain Iff made light work of his opponent.

After scoring a point, Iff turned to his teammates and exclaimed in his Swiss accent, in what seemed an impersonation of a Saturday Night Live “Hans and Franz” skit, “somebody, please bring some beautiful women to my match, so that I can have some motivation.”

It seemed cocky, but I have to agree. Not only for Iff, but for the entire tennis team: Somebody give these guys some motivation. Big Sky opponents just are not getting it done. Import the Swedish Bikini team if you have to, but do something to keep these guys in the game.

The men?s tennis team has simply dominated conference play in recent years, and this season, for the fourth time in the past five years, it has taken claim to the Big Sky championship.

Junior Sherif Zaher was named by Big Sky coaches the most valuable player in the league, and Chris Smith, Fabio Jesus, Joseph Gilbert, Iff, and Kevin Vierra have all been solid, if not excellent, in every match. Now, they will be heading into the NCAA tournament on a roll of 18 wins in 19 matches. Unstoppable!

Well, almost unstoppable.

The likelihood of them playing a top 20 team in the NCAA?s is very high, because the Big Sky isn?t a power tennis conference, and they will be a pretty low seed in the west regional. So, the chances of them continuing their current streak may be deadened by the opposition of a deeper, more well-rounded team such as Stanford, UCLA or Pepperdine. Then, you take away Vierra, who?s been a fixture at the six seed, but done for the year with an injury, and the chances get even slimmer.

That said, this is still the most competitive program that we?ve seen at Sac State this year. Their perennial success has made them one of the best teams at Sac State, period.

Only the volleyball team can boast a Big Sky trophy around campus and go into every conference game without even a hint of ambiguity to how the game may turn out. It?s obvious that they are going to win. It?s obvious that they will be at the NCAA?s, trying to grab a little bit of national recognition with a win or two in the big dance.

Credit head coach Chris Evers with putting together such a team. Especially when you look up and down the roster, and notice that the squad is full of international players. You have guys from Switzerland, Egypt and Brazil, who have come to make Sacramento home. It?s not just a group of locals who had Sac State as their default choice of schools when a bigger program didn?t wine and dine them into town for a free ride. It?s a story of successful recruiting.

The only thing we need now is a little bit of money so that the tennis teams (of course the women are included as well), can get some decent courts on campus so that they don?t have to travel to a racquet club to get a good game in. Maybe then, you might get a few stragglers around campus, who have nothing else to do, wandering by to check out a little tennis action before they grab their keys and scurry home.

It could happen.

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