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NORFOLK — The sound of an electric razor and spouts of laughter and joy meant one thing for the Old Dominion men’s tennis team — the Monarchs had won a championship.
During the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, ODU coach Dominik Mueller grew out his beard. When he was finally able to meet with his team again in January 2021, he promised he’d keep it until they won a conference title.
“I’m glad that I didn’t have that beard for another 10 years,” Mueller said. “But they didn’t forget. We celebrated, (they) immediately brought out the razor and went right at it.”
True to his word, Mueller let his team shave his beard Saturday after Old Dominion won the Sun Belt Conference championship and secured its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2018.
“A lot of us guys have been here for a long time, actually for five years, and we’ve been waiting on it,” senior Luca Maldoner said. “We’ve been in the Sun Belt now for the first year, but we weren’t able to win the conference tournament in (Conference USA), and we’re really excited about it.”
The Monarchs took a few days off to enjoy the “honeymoon phase” and are now back to work ahead of the NCAA selection show Monday.
The conference title came after ODU endured some disheartening adversity: Injuries shook the roster in the final weeks of last season, ranging from torn ACLs, meniscus and complications from serious car accidents.
“I think last year there was a point where the team could have either gone away, or did what they did and just fight back and come back even stronger,” Mueller said. “I think if you were here last year around that time when all of the injuries and other things happened to us, and you saw the response from those guys, you understand why we won this championship this year.”
The injuries started last year with redshirt senior Nicola Vidal. While standing outside a 7-Eleven in October 2021 after a match, he was hit by a driver and pinned against a cement trash can.
Vidal’s leg was broken, his knee was destroyed and his femoral artery had been severed. Norfolk native Perrin Priester happened to be at the same 7-Eleven and witnessed the accident. The tourniquet he applied likely saved Vidal’s life — something for which Vidal said he will be grateful to Priester forever.
Mueller said when he got to the hospital that night to see Vidal, he had a smile on his face.
“The first thing I thought (was), it’s something that I couldn’t really control — it was out of my control,” Vidal said. “Then at that point, after the first kind of shock and stuff, I just thought, you know what: Nothing’s gonna change if I keep thinking about it. So I just said, let’s try to move forward, let’s try to see what possibilities I have, let’s already look forward to the rehab process. I think that was the right mindset that helped me.”
Two surgeries and several months of rehab later, Vidal was back with the team in September 2022 and played all this season.
The man who hit Vidal was sentenced to five years in prison on April 10.
“Thinking about all that I have been through but also, our team has been through, because obviously, the accident (that) happened to me was just the tip of an iceberg.”
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A few weeks later, Old Dominion lost senior Francois Le Tellac to a meniscus injury and then lost Maldoner to an ACL injury.
After flying back to his native Austria for surgery last April, Maldoner made a speedy recovery and was back on the court in January 2023 for a doubles match against Georgetown. Maldoner clinched the winning point against South Alabama in the conference tournament final last week.
“It’s the icing on the cake for me, but I’m really happy for the guys in general,” Maldoner said. “That’s cool for me, and it’s been a long process, but I’m just happy for the guys that we could get it done.”
Muller said Maldoner’s speedy recovery was one of the “most heroic individual efforts” the ODU athletic department has ever seen.
“I mean it sounds silly, but this was like a Hollywood ending,” Mueller said. “This is the stuff that you see in movies and you’re like, ‘Oh, come on, they exaggerated, that didn’t really happen.’ But if you really think about it, he tore his ACL last March, he had surgery in April, I mean, that’s probably the worst sports injury you can have. A lot of pro athletes don’t come back in a year, a lot of athletes don’t come back in 18 months. He got back, full season and clinched a championship title.”
The team has rallied around each other in the last year and built up its already strong sense of camaraderie.
“We supported each other all the time,” Maldoner said. “When Nico started to have his injury and then Francois a couple of weeks later and then me, we just tried to help each other out as much as possible and be there for each other.”
With the conference tournament and all those injuries finally in the rearview mirror, a Monarchs squad led by seven upperclassmen is turning its attention to the NCAA Tournament.
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“We have an experienced team, but when it comes to the NCAA Tournament, we’re an inexperienced team,” Mueller said. “I think the leaders — the upperclassmen — they just have to use the experience of the five years to just stay us on course of what we have done. I think the biggest thing from here on out for the next one and a half, two weeks is not deviating from what we’ve done. Doing the same thing that got us to this point … not try to now do something different or special.”
Despite the lack of postseason experience, Vidal and the Monarchs aren’t letting it affect how they end their college careers.
“It’s already the perfect end for our college careers, but we’re not done yet. Now we have honestly nothing to lose. We already had a very satisfying season … now whatever. We’re ready to show what we’re made of.”