BYU sports: Cougar tennis team enjoys successful spring break

PROVO — The Brigham Young University men's tennis team went 2-1 over the weekend at the Boise State Spring Break Invitational. With wins over Nevada and Yale, the Cougars squad full of underclassmen is now 12-6 overall.

"I was pleased with our weekend, considering the competition," said head coach Brad Pearce. "I think it was a great effort on our part to come back with two wins over two talented teams."

The Cougars will now begin Mountain West Conference play this weekend, and Coach Pearce knows that his team will be in for a challenge. "Our conference is going to be very good this year," he said. "Every single match is going to be a dogfight this year. We need to be well prepared for each match and then we just have to play well. "

Returning champion UNLV is returning nearly their whole team, as is New Mexico. San Diego State and TCU will be the other teams to watch for as they both have fared well in their non-conference schedule. "We don't have the experience that other teams have," said Pearce. "We have a lot of freshman, but we have won a lot of matches so far this year and we are excited to start conference."

After being on the road for a long time early in the season, and before heading to Boise last weekend, the Cougars enjoyed back-to-back weekends playing at home, and Pearce feels that those hard-fought home wins have improved his team.

"I think that the back-to-back weekends with two matches in a day were important for us," he said. "They were physically challenging, but it was good to be home. Those matches made all or our guys tougher."

TRACK AND FIELD: BYU senior Jacob Gustafsson led the Cougars this weekend at the Willie Williams/Dave Murray Invitational in Tucson, Ariz. last weekend. Gustafsson qualified for regionals and finished in second place in the 800 meters with a time of 1 minute 50.41 seconds. While Gustafsson was the only regional qualifier on Saturday, during Friday's competition five others between the men and women's teams were able to qualify on their first opportunity of the outdoor season.

SWIMMING AND DIVING: For the first time in her career, sophomore Tawni Jones was named to the All-American team as a second team member after her 14th-place finish on the 3-meter board at nationals. Jones was the only Cougar to qualify for this year's NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. She also dove from the 1-meter board in at nationals and finished in 26th place.