The Eastern men’s tennis team will compete this weekend against a familiar Ohio Valley Conference opponent when they head to the Austin Peay Invitational in Clarksville, Tenn.

The tournament will run from Friday, Oct. 7 to Sunday, Oct. 9.

The tournament will be the second-to-last fall tennis tournament for the Panthers. The team will head to the Southern Illinois Fall Draw on Oct. 16 in Carbondale to wrap up its fall season.

The Panthers have not had the amount of success they would have hoped for when competing in Clarksville, Tenn.

When the Panthers took on Austin Peay on the road last season, they fell 6-1 to the Governors in an OVC match-up last season.

The Panthers haven’t beat the Governors since the 2009 season when they won 6-1.

The team is coming off a successful weekend at the Dayton/Wright State Shootout in September where they saw junior Warren Race and sophomore Kevin Bauman take home the “B Doubles Flight” championship.

The Governors are coming off of their first tournament of the fall tennis season when they competed at the Louisville Fall Invitational in Louisville, Ky.

Eastern head coach John Blackburn said he likes the direction the team is moving after their last fall performance.

“The guys are showing they’re moving in the right direction and showing a lot of improvement from last year,” Blackburn said in a press release.

This weekend’s event will be the first time this fall season that the Panthers will run into another OVC team before the actual conference schedule begins in the spring.

The host Governors have a pair of All-Ohio Valley Conference selections from last season in Jasmin Ademovic and Sean Bailey.

Ademovic was last season’s OVC Freshman of the Year, while Bailey was a second team selection for the All-OVC team.

A new addition to the Governor team this season is freshman Michal Hriciste, who will come to Austin Peay all the way from Zlin, Czech Republic.

Hriciste was the second new addition to the Austin Peay team behind another international signee, Aleksas Tverijonas. Tverijonas comes to Austin Peay from Lithiuania.

The Austin Peay Invitational will be the last action the Governors will see before they head to compete at the ITA Regional, starting on Oct. 20 in Knoxville, Tenn.

The Governors and the Panthers will meet again in Clarksville, Tenn., on Tuesday, March 22, when the two teams will meet for OVC action.

Dominic Renzetti can be reached at 581-7942 or dcrenzetti@eiu.edu.