The Eastern tennis season came to a close Sunday afternoon as both squads dropped their season finales to Austin Peay, pushing them out of Ohio Valley Conference Tournament contention.

Both the men and women had a chance to move into a bracket spot in the OVC Tournament last weekend with a couple of wins over conference foes Murray State and Austin Peay.

It was not surprising that both Panther teams fell short in their OVC matches and were unable to dig down and battle through the skepticism.

The squads have been struggling immensely as the men finished 4-15 and 1-6 in conference action.

The women did not fair much better, going 3-12 and 3-6 in league play.

For the women, with Austin Peay already locked in with a high seed in the tournament, Eastern just needed to get through Murray State, who is now the No. 6 seed.

The Panthers traveled to take on a beatable 7-10 Racers squad on Saturday which, at the time, only had a 4-4 OVC record.

Eastern didn’t put up much of a fight, as it was unable to pick up a point, getting swept in the big match 7-0.

The women battled in doubles, just falling short of stealing the point but were unable to push any of the singles matches into a third set, losing in straight sets every match.

Finishing its season losing their final two matches, the young women’s squad will take this disappointing season and learn from it, look for it to return to tournament form next season.

As for the men, their disappointing season saw nothing better than a few individual highlights scattered between matches.

After the 2-1 start the Panthers went on a seven match losing streak that was only followed by another skid of five more matches.

This is why it was no surprise that the men were unable come out of this big weekend with a win.

The individual highlights came from the rackets of senior Jeff Rutherford and freshmen Justin Haag and Michael Sperry.

Rutherford, in his final season, rallied back from a rough 3-6 start to finish with an 11-8 record and had an impressive conference mark at 5-1.

With the emergence of the two freshmen, Haag and Sperry, the Panther men should have a strong foundation to build around for next season but will need to work together as a team to return to winning form.

Dane Urban can be reached at 581-7944 or dcurban@eiu.edu