RIO GRANDE VALLEY – The Southland Conference (SLC) announced on Tuesday that graduate student Sam Whitehead of The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Vaqueros men's tennis team is the SLC Men's Tennis Player of the Week.
 
Whitehead, the reigning SLC Men's Tennis Player of the Year, spearheaded UTRGV's 4-3 win over rival and defending SLC regular season champions Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (TAMUCC) with wins at No. 1 singles and doubles Saturday.
 
In doubles, Whitehead and sophomore Loic Young Kriegel found themselves down 3-0 before rallying to win six of the next seven games against Matthieu Coignet and Mikel Garmendia to help secure the doubles point for the Vaqueros.
 
In singles, Whitehead delivered again, defeating Nicholas Niox Chateau 6-2, 6-4, to even the match at 2-2, and swing the momentum back to UTRGV.
 
With every point critical, the team captain rose to the moment, helping avenge last season's 4-3 conference title loss in Corpus Christi, where both teams entered the final match undefeated.
 
The victory also marked several milestones for the surging program. This is the team's first win over TAMUCC since 2023, a 4-3 win in Edinburg, and the first time in program history that both the men's and women's tennis programs defeated the Islanders on the same day.
 
In addition, the win officially clinched the department's second-ever South Texas Showdown, presented by Rally Credit Union, the department's annual rivalry series with TAMUCC that spans across 14 sports.
 
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