After committing four years, 76 matches and countless hours of training to the men’s tennis program, the senior, captain duo Daniel Elston and Steed Johnson faced disappointment as North Carolina A&T failed to roll in on Thursday afternoon.
“I was very upset. It was the last time really on the home schedule where friends, my family obviously lives too far away, so they couldn't come, but to play for my close friends one more time and for all the hype to be ruined was pretty devastating,” said Elston, who is from St. Austell, Cornell, England.
For Johnson, both his parents arrived along with his sister, who flew in from Nashville, Tennessee, for the match.
Johnson and Elston were partners for the No. 1 doubles spot, prior to Elston’s wrist injury.
Elston played from the No. 1 spot in singles, as well during both this year and his junior year; Johnson holds the No. 4 spot.
The team began the day expecting a normal match, according to Elston, repeating the same game day routine.
“We were out there, ready to warm up, and we were all ready to go as normal. And ten minutes later, there's no sign. Fifteen minutes later, there's no sign. Normally, teams turn up around an hour before to warm up,” said Elston.
At thirty minutes before game time, worry shadowed the team. Men’s tennis Head Coach Marty Perry began attempting to call the opposition, alongside Bill Irish, Associate Athletics Director for Internal Operations, to find them.
After “hours,” according to Elston, Perry finally got through to the North Carolina A&T coach who confirmed they were not coming.
Irish also received an email response from the North Carolina A&T athletic director, Earl Hilton, a little more than an hour after game time, apologizing for “any miscommunication,” without any official acceptance of blame.
“I am sorry for this mix-up. I apologize if we failed to communicate effectively,” said Hilton in his email.
Since the “mix-up,” North Carolina A&T has removed the game from their online schedule. The Longwood Athletics official website lists the game as a forfeit, improving their record to 4-15 overall, and 0-8 in conference.
Elston “always wanted it to try to end on a high” and had “a lot of people coming to watch.”
“To have all these people show up, then it was almost embarrassing walking around saying they’re not there, times up, the match is canceled,” said Elston. “I felt embarrassed, as well as upset, that all this effort gone out for us for a no show. It's embarrassing.”
Sophomore Rosen Ilchev sympathized with his teammates, not believing they deserved this for their final home match.
“It's pretty disappointing given how much these two seniors have done for us. For that match not to happen, it's disappointing,” said Ilchev.
Both Elston and Perry believe the disappointment could’ve been prevented.
“I think more could have been done to confirm they were coming, maybe a phone call before, just seeing if they were going to come. Especially senior day, you know, Steed's sister flew in after all and that's a lot of time, money to come watch,” said Elston.
Perry felt that it was a bad idea to place the senior day on the last home game of the schedule, and the no-show demonstrated the need for contracts, an agreement between teams to appear in scheduled games, in tennis.
“The rule is that if you have a contract and the other team doesn’t show, it’s a forfeit. The caveat to that is if you don’t have a contract, but you have proof that both teams agreed upon having the match, it’s a forfeit,” said Perry.
Perry stated he was searching for another university to fit into the schedule prior to the conference tournament, in order to give the seniors their senior day opportunity.
“I’m very disappointed for Steed and Dan, they shouldn’t have had that happen on their senior day,” said Perry.
As the conference tournament nears, Elston said he has hope they can move on from the senior day mishap and is “really looking forward” to it.
“Even though our season hasn’t been great so far, we’ve been close in every single match. We have a nice chance.”
