April 28, 2011
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -
The Illinois State men's tennis team was honored for its on-and-off the court performance Thursday evening at the MVC Tennis Awards Banquet in St. Louis, Mo., where the Redbirds took home four all-conference selections and two scholar-athlete selections.
Timon Reichelt, with a 12-8 record in dual matches, and Tuomas Manner, with a 14-7 record in dual matches, received first-team all-conference honors at the No. 2 and No. 5 singles positions. The doubles duo of Filip Miljevic and Mya Smith-Dennis, boasting a 10-9 record in dual matches, received first-team all-conference honors at No. 3 doubles, while Alexander Pelaez, with a 16-6 mark in singles and an 18-4 mark in doubles in dual matches, was named to the all-select team.
Head coach Cris James believes his all-conference recipients are deserving of their awards.
"We've started a tradition of being one of the top teams in the conference, so we expect to win some of these awards," James said. "The guys that won are definitely very deserving, and I feel there were a couple of other guys on our team that were deserving as well. There were a lot of close votes this year, because we had three very competitive teams at the top of the conference."
"I'm happy for Tuomas. It's great to have a freshman make all-conference. Alex and Timon have led our team all year, and they certainly deserve to be honored, and Filip and Mya as well. It seems like we have almost every one of our guys on the list, and that's nice to see."
Miljevic also earned first-team scholar-athlete honors for the second-straight season, boasting a 3.75 grade-point average (GPA) in finance and international business. Pelaez was named to the scholar-athlete honorable mention team, currently holding a 3.54 GPA in business.
James has been impressed with his team's effort in the classroom this season.
"One of the main goals of our program is for our guys to succeed in the classroom every year," James said. "We take pride in doing well in our studies, and it's always nice for these guys to get more honors to add to their résumés."
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