Spring Season Preview: Men’s Tennis

The members of The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) men’s tennis team are laser-focused on one thing – getting a ring.

Winning a conference championship is often the goal teams set before their respective seasons start. The Vaqueros haven’t gotten there yet under head coach Nathan Robinson, who is heading into his fourth spring at UTRGV. But they felt like they got really close last year, dropping a 4-3 match in the semifinals that went down to the wire to the eventual conference champion.

With four contributors back from last season’s squad in Ivo Isqueiro, Santiago Serrano, Paolo Bonaguro and Will Roberts and the return of redshirt junior Sam Whitehead to the top half of the lineup, the Vaqueros have a secure foundation in place. The fall season showcased growth and potential from the returners and newcomers alike, and further proved how determined the student-athletes are.

“There’s a kind of aura around this team and you can feel that it’s trying to be special,” Robinson said. “It’s really hard to quantify, but there’s just a feeling when you’re around this group that I’ve felt before with some pretty special teams. It’s how locked in they are, how much they enjoy being around each other and competing and how much they really want to be that group. Now it’s just a matter of them going out and capitalizing on where their focus is.”

As has been the norm under Robinson, UTRGV loaded its non-conference schedule with big name opponents. The Vaqueros will start the season at #1 Texas and will play plenty of perennial powers and contenders from across the state, including Baylor, Texas Tech, SMU, Rice and UTSA.

“We’re not shying away from tough matches early on. We’re going to play a bunch of top 20, 30 schools right out of the gate, including #1 in the country. In those matches, our big goal is to play our styles and compete against those top-end guys and see how we match up. That way, when we transition into the mid-major level, we’ve already seen what the top echelon does and how our ball works against that level,” Robinson said.

The men’s tennis program will be making its return to the Southland Conference (SLC) after competing as a member from 2010 to 2013. Even while a member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), UTRGV played most of the SLC teams it’ll battle with this year often.

Rival Texas A&M-Corpus Christi has been on the schedule twice per year for eight years, and the teams will battle twice in 2025 too – once in a non-conference match, due to the South Texas Showdown, and the second counting toward the conference slate. Lamar and Incarnate Word have been regular opponents who make for exciting, tight, tense matchups. Nicholls and NJIT have been on the schedule during Robinson’s tenure, too. The only “new” opponents, really, will be New Orleans and Bryant.

“Our guys are extremely excited to get started in the Southland and get to compete against those schools not in January or February, but in April when it really matters. There’s a lot of familiarity there and those matches against UIW, Lamar, Corpus are always extremely fun, feisty, combative matches. The regional feel and the overall intensity with those matches will make conference feel like what conference is supposed to be.”

Heading into the spring season with such a confident bunch presents a new and exciting challenge for Robinson and assistant coach Ekaterina Vorobeva. The coaching staff doesn’t have to push the student-athletes to be focused or accountable, since they’re so self-driven, so instead, they’re finding ways to balance the hard work with fun.

“Since our guys are so locked-in on a goal, the big thing is to make sure they’re not losing the fact that they get to play a sport. We’ve been making sure our practices are competitive but fun. Our job is to keep it fun for them and make sure they’re enjoying this process of growth they get to go through,” Robinson said.

With clear goals in mind and the right type of competitors on the roster, the Vaqueros have set their expectations high for the upcoming season, and they’re pushing themselves to meet those. It won’t always be easy, but it’ll always be worth it because of the team-first mentality of every individual.

“They’re an extremely talented group, probably the most talented top-to-bottom since I’ve been here, but it’s overall their infections energy and joy that makes them different. It’s a group that loves to compete with each other and for each other,” Robinson said. “There’s not a day that goes by that they’re not mentioning their goals. They don’t just think they should, but they expect that they’re going to.”