The Vandal men’s tennis doubles pairing of Marius Cirstea and Andrew Dobbs beat nationally ranked teams and won the ITA Regional Championships in Las Vegas from Oct. 19 to 23, earning their spot at the National Indoor Championships in New York.
“It’s a week long and we had to play nationally ranked teams and it was huge to go six days in a row with high level tennis, with singles first, and then in doubles and to just keep producing, it was huge,” Dobbs said.
Two weeks ago, Idaho director of tennis Jeff Beaman started experimenting with new pairings. Dobbs and Cirstea had only a week and a half of actual practice as a pairing before regionals.
“You never expect to see a team when they are brand new and you are putting them together based on potential to first of all beat the No. 2 seed early, win that many matches, and then win the whole thing, it’s rare,” Beaman said.
Beaman said even if you have a team that goes in nationally ranked, you are not expecting to win regionals.
“You feel you have a chance but to have a random undefeated team, it was a very nice surprise,” Beaman said.
Cirstea said he is positive that Beaman is not the only one who was surprised by the win.
“I don’t think anybody expected us to win, I’m not talking about our team, but anybody else from the tournament,” Cirstea said. “So this surprise is probably going to have people asking if we will make the top 30 this year.”
The first week of November the duo will travel to New York with the chance of becoming National Champions.
Finding the right chemistry for a doubles pairing is not easy to do, but with Dobbs and Cirstea, Beaman said it was the perfect matchup.
“Andrew is very strong at the net with his volleys and Marius has a very big serve and a very attacking return so in doubles when you have a guy already at the net while the other guy is returning or serving, it allows Andrew to use his strength to put balls away with Marius hitting big off his serve and off his returns,” Beaman said.
The two men are aware of each other’s skill sets and both have great respect for the other as a player. Dobbs said Cirstea is probably the best person he has ever played with.
“When we were playing, Marius would hit a serve and even when they would get lucky enough to return it, if anything was short in the court he would just smack it down the middle and they wouldn’t even be able to touch it,” Dobbs said.
While Cirstea is dominating the back of the court, he said it’s nice having Dobbs up front.
“Dobbsy is really good on the net and he moves really well and knows the game so he sees when the guy is going to change it or hit a lob or something and he is always in the right position which allows us to be more offensive and the other team to play defense,” Cirstea said.
A win like this is a confidence boost for the pairing — one Beaman said he hopes will rub off on the entire team.
“It is good for guys on the team to see that we can be nationally successful with top programs and also to see what hard work turns into or what it can produce,” Beaman said.
Beaman said as soon as the team heard of the win ,text messages started pouring in and some guys met up with Cirstea and Dobbs when they got back in town to congratulate them.
“The great thing about this year’s team is we have a lot of guys that hang out together off the court, they help each other with projects and with tutoring and at practice everyone is really getting along great,” Beaman said.
Beaman said he sees this doubles pairing being together for the whole year and the goal will be to have a strong showing at nationals, and then to play some highly ranked teams next semester and get high enough in the rankings to be able to go to the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Dobbs said he is not going to get too far ahead of himself yet.
“Next tournament is in two weeks, New York, just have to go into practice and prepare for it and just try to match the performance we put on in Vegas and see what happens from there,” Dobbs said.
Cirstea said they feel really good going into the big tournament.
“Our tennis level is pretty high right now, we actually played really, really well in Las Vegas and I think that we can do some great results in New York,” Cirstea said.
He said that while he is focusing on New York in two weeks, he is also excited for the upcoming spring season.
“The spring season is going to be great because we will be playing together on the court a lot and learning how each other plays so it will help us a lot and make us a better doubles team,” Cirstea said.
While the team is playing together on the court, Cirstea said they have a pretty good source for advice, too.
“Jeff works a lot with us in doubles and he teaches us the right techniques and the right moves on the court which is what we need to do to be good tennis players,” Cirstea said.
He said Beaman is also great at picking out doubles pairings, which is why he almost always has one of the best doubles teams in conference.
“He sees what the good things and the bad things are from each player
and he combines them,” Cirstea said.