Featured photo by Savion Davis
Story by Brett Walker
MURFREESBORO, TENN– The Middle Tennessee men’s tennis team (5-3) is hunting for its fifth straight Conference USA title. After four years of being at the top, head coach Jimmy Borendame faces a new challenge, maintaining his dynasty. For the 2023-2024 campaign, MTSU returned three players from its previous roster and gained seven newcomers by way of incoming freshmen and transfers.
Despite 70% of his roster being new to the program, Coach Borendame says it won’t alter the team’s goals for this season
“Whether the roster changes or doesn’t change it doesn’t really affect my goals,” Borendame said. “The program’s goal is to just focus on the little things of getting better every day, and you know I think that’s the new wave of college athletics. I mean it’s going to be roster management, new guys coming in and some guys going. It’s just going to be something that we’re going to deal with.”
With a team mostly composed of new additions, the doubles pairs have had to quickly feel each other out. For first-year doubles partners Karim Al-Amin and Shu Matsuoka (3-3), it was a challenge at first, but with each match, they feel that their chemistry will continue to grow.
“The biggest challenge was that he is a lefty, and I hadn’t played much doubles with a lefty before, so it was a little bit harder for me to understand our weapon, because it’s different from playing with a righty,” Matsuoka said. “When we started to figure out how to use his lefty skillset it was easier to get into patterns to score more points.”
Karim Al-Amin had a similar feeling about their progress. Al-Amin also expressed that the coaching staff had done a great deal to help the pair become more comfortable playing together and to help them succeed.
“Coaching helps a lot obviously, but I think me and Shu from the beginning had some chemistry, there was an understanding of the way we play doubles that was just natural. I think our chemistry is one of the biggest pieces of our success,” Al-Amin said. “Coaching made it a lot easier of course. With the input of Coach Jimmy and Coach Cali, it’s easier to succeed in doubles. Sometimes it differs a little bit from what we want but the coaches have so much experience, so they can give a lot of input that makes us even more successful on the court.”
While the team’s chemistry continues to grow throughout the season, Borendame and the Blue Raiders continue to keep their eyes on the prize, that fifth straight Conference USA title. Although MTSU has been dominant in the conference as of late, Borendame remembers what it felt like to struggle. From 2012-2019, following its exit from the Sun Belt Conference, MTSU had zero conference championships. Those seasons were teaching moments for MTSU’s 13-year head coach.
“You know in 2013 we actually had seven championship match points in the Sun Belt, which was a really sore point for me,” Borendame said. “But in all of those seasons we had good teams. We had some unfortunate incidents with some injuries where we had the number one guy go down for the year. Then we actually had another guy who just packed up and went home for no reason. Then when switching to Conference USA I think, you know, every practice, every day, is just another opportunity for me to get better.”
Even with heavy roster turnover, Coach Borendame and his Blue Raiders have the same goal as in years past: get better every day. With that, team chemistry will flourish, as will the winning culture that has developed here in Murfreesboro.
Brett Walker is a sportswriter for MTSU Sidelines. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com. Also, follow us on Facebook and Instagram @mtsusidelines, or on X @MTSUSidelines.
