This past weekend at the Wilson ITA Midwest Championships in Columbus, Ohio, Eastern senior tennis players Jordan Nestrud and Vuk Milicevic both achieved unsatisfying results.

Milicevic lost his first round qualifier to Jeremy Langer of Indiana University 7-6 and 6-2 and was knocked out of the ITA singles tournament, while Nustrud was also knocked out after losing his first round qualifier match to Chris Herrlinger of Xavier 6-4, 3-6 and 6-3.

Milicevic and Nustrud also both lost their doubles match to Jake Annear and Julian Dehn of Minnesota, 8-4. Milicevic said he was disappointed because he had chances to win the first set of his singles match, but failed to clinch it and let momentum slip away.

“I thought I played well. In the first set I had two set points to clinch, but I ended up losing,” Milicevic said. “The fact that I played the first set so close but ended up losing kept me unfocused during the second set. Instead of regrouping and focusing on the task at hand, I kept thinking about what could have been and got off to a slow start.”

Milicevic said that although they were both confident coming into their doubles match, they both did not execute as well as they would have liked.

“I love playing with (Nestrud)”, Milicevic said. “We’ve gelled well together before and we have a lot of confidence playing together. We were up 4-3 in our match and then the wheels came off and they capitalized and finished us off easily.”

Milicevic believes the reason for their loss was that mentally, both he and Jordan were not focused throughout their entire match.

“If you can play well at the beginning of the match, you can play well the whole time,” Milicevic said. “Tennis is a very mental game and we didn’t focus on every play, especially deep in the match.”

Although these were not the results both of them were looking for, head coach John Blackburn said he was happy with the effort and thought it was a good experience for Nestrud and Milicevic.

“We played a very high of level of competition and competed well, but just came up short,” Blackburn said. “It’s good to play in such high level tournaments, and I think it was a good experience for the guys.”

Although this tournament ends both Nustrud and Milicevic’s final fall season at Eastern, Milicevic believes that they can both take what they have learn from this past tournament to help them play well in there their final spring season at Eastern.

Ari Horing can be reached at 581-7944 or at akhoring@eiu.edu.