By DERRICK BENNINGTON
LongwoodLancers.com

It's not often in college athletics that a rebuilding project takes flight in year two, but nine matches into the 2017 men's tennis season, Longwood's second-year head coach Pierre Tafelski has done just that.

Hired to take over the Lancer men's tennis program in August, 2015, Tafelski has completely changed the trajectory of the team in just 18 months, turning a perennial Big South cellar-dweller into the surprise of the conference. Through the first two months of the spring, Tafelski's Lancers are off to their best start of the Division I era, amassing a 7-2 overall record that includes back-to-back road wins at traditional Big South frontrunners Liberty and Winthrop.  

Those conference victories, both 4-3 barnburners, not only jumped the Lancers out to a 2-1 start in conference play but were the first two Big South wins in program history as part of a milestone-filled spring.

The turnaround has been the byproduct of a drastic culture change inspired by Tafelski, the former ITA Division II National Assistant Coach of the Year at powerhouse Hawaii Pacific. Bharani Sankar, a four-year player on the team who played his senior season for Tafelski in 2015-16, noted Tafelski was "tough and demanding" from the get-go, a sentiment that current senior captain Florian Uffer echoed. 

"The start of my junior year, I remember he came out to the courts for the first time, and we were all playing by ourselves because it was the first practice of the season," said senior captain Florian Uffer. "We were just playing very relaxed, and he said 'Alright, stop this.' From then on, it was a big change in intensity." 

Tafelski, a former ITA Division II National Assistant Coach of the Year at Hawaii Pacific, spent the 2015-16 season breaking down the old culture and building a new foundation. In his first season on campus, he guided the Lancers to seven wins and had the team on the cusp of breaking through for their first conference win, falling just short to Radford 4-3 in the regular season finale.

The complete overhaul the program went through didn't go unnoticed. After the season's end, Tafelski was named the Longwood Coach of the Year by the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), as voted on by SAAC members representing every varsity athletics team on campus. 

Now in his second season, Tafelski's focus has been on continuing the work they put in last year and furthering the development of winning tennis at Longwood.

The Lancers have already equaled their win total from a season ago and are just one victory away from matching their highest win total of the past five seasons. Even more impressive are the two most recent of those victories, coming against Winthrop and Liberty programs that have combined to go 21-10 at home against current Big South members since Longwood joined the conference in 2012-13.

"The biggest challenge was to recreate the whole culture – to make the guys understand that it takes a lot of hard work and overall dedication to the program in order to become successful," Tafelski said.

Few outside of Longwood's locker room saw that early surge coming, as evidenced by the program's predicted last-place finish in the Big South Preseason Coaches Poll. Ironically, the teams who occupied two of the top four spots in that poll – first-place Winthrop and fourth-place Liberty – have already fallen to the Lancers.  

"The expectations [in the locker room] are pretty high, even though we do have a very young team," Tafelski said. "It started last fall in August and we've been working to become as successful as we can be right away.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of Tafelski's teachings has been Uffer, a mainstay at the top of the rotation who is already halfway to matching the 10 singles wins he recorded last season. This year Uffer has formed one of the top 1-2 punches in the Big South alongside freshman Amadeo Blasco, with the two combining for a 13-5 singles record and a 6-3 mark in doubles play.

Uffer has taken that hard-working attitude to heart and has stepped up as the lone captain on the squad, helping the newcomers understand what it takes to be part of the newly built culture under Tafelski.

"The main thing is being accountable and working towards the team," Uffer said. "Before [coach arrived] we were six individual players competing for ourselves first, and then for the team. When coach came along, we started working as a team more…when we work as a team, there's a lot more chances to win. I think that's one of the major things he gave to me."

That mentality and drive to win Tafelski has inspired also showed itself in a talented freshman class, headlined by Blasco, a top-50 U18 junior player and top-100 open player in Spain. A product of Valencia, Spain, Blasco has rolled to an impressive 8-1 start in singles play, the best start by any Lancer since the 2008-09 season.

Blasco, the Big South Freshman of the Week on March 8, has only played two matches that have gone a full three sets, taking six of them in straight-set wins.

Blasco's first three-set match of the season came in Longwood's historic victory at Liberty, knocking off the Flames 4-3 for the program's first ever Big South win. He took down the Flames' top seed in a convincing 6-1 third set to clinch the victory, his first match at the one line after spending the first five at No. 2.

Behind Blasco and Uffer, Longwood has gotten contributions from veterans and newcomers alike, amassing a combined 33-19 singles record and a 17-10 mark in doubles play. Among that group are sophomore Julian Farthing who is off to a 7-1 start this spring as the primary No. 3, freshman Arthur Bardelloto who is 5-2 in the middle of the lineup, and freshman Noah Petralia and junior Jorge Gomis, who are a combined 7-8 at the back of the rotation.

But even with the success they've had in 2017, the Lancers know there's still a lot of work to be done if they want to be a consistent winner and claim a Big South title.

"We've just gotten our first two conference wins, and we can get the rest of them," Uffer said. "We know that we're able to do it. If they're close matches, we know we're mentally strong and can pull them through. Our goal is to get as many of them as we can, and get the best seed for the tournament as possible." 

The Lancers return to the court this Saturday, March 18, for a Big South matchup against UNC Asheville at the Hampden-Sydney Tennis Courts. Longwood will then hit the road once more – where they are 5-1 this spring – to face Radford and Gardner-Webb, before wrapping up Big South play against Presbyterian on April 2.

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