Mac Gifford is a Robin Hood of sorts. But instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, the Syracuse tennis head coach tries to beat the gifted to give the rest of us some satisfaction.

On Saturday at 10 a.m. when Syracuse faces Yale at Drumlins Tennis Center, he’ll have his chance.

‘I want to win this match for all those kids who grew up wanting to go to Yale but couldn’t — and went to Stony Brook,’ Gifford said.

But don’t let Gifford fool you. He’s got more than just good intentions on his mind — he’s also concerned about bragging rights.

Gifford’s the child of two Ivy Leaguers. His siblings even went to Ivy League schools. Instead of following suit, Gifford attended Cal-Berkeley. He’s been hearing trash from his family about it ever since.

‘I would like to really beat Yale,’ Gifford said. ‘And a good friend of mine (Chad Skorupka) is the coach there.’

While Gifford has his reasons for wanting this win, his team has others. The Orangewomen were shutout by the Bulldogs last season in New Haven, Conn., and SU will have a chance to showcase its improvement against No. 44 Yale.

‘Any team that’s ranked in the top 50 in the east is a damn good team,’ Gifford said. ‘It takes teams like Yale to bring you to a level so you can see what you’re made of. It takes playing teams like that to get recognition.’

‘We lost pretty badly to them last year,’ sophomore Kristine Bech Holte said. ‘They’re very tough, but I’m sure we can compete much better than we did last year.’

This year, SU will have the comfort of facing Yale at home.

‘Mac scheduled this match because they’re a good team,’ freshman Wei-Ming Leong said. ‘But being at home makes it a little easier because we won’t have to be on the bus for hours, and we can relax.’

Syracuse will have one more driving factor on its side: Saturday will be the final home meet for the team’s four seniors and Holte, who will be leaving at the end of the semester to attend the Royal Academy of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, next year.

‘It’s kind of like a senior night,’ Leong said. ‘The seniors are going to want to go out and push it real hard. And that’s going to help everyone else work hard.’

The seniors, though, are downplaying the importance of the meet. Senior Shervin Saedinia doesn’t see why this meet should be treated differently from others, as the Orangewomen still have two regular season meets in addition to possible postseason matchups.

‘It’s just like any other match,’ Saedinia said. ‘It’s just another team, another match, another hopeful win.’

Holte doesn’t think she’ll get nostalgic during the meet, either.

‘It might be weird, but I don’t think it’s going to be that sentimental,’ Holte said.

Gifford, who’s coached all four years of the seniors’ careers, doesn’t buy the departing players’ stern fronts.

‘They’re thinking about it,’ Gifford said.

By the time the meet starts, he thinks his team will be motivated to give his departing players a proper send-off.

For his tight-knit team — and for his bragging rights — he better not be wrong.

‘It might be a shame that I scheduled such a darn good team for our last home meet,” Gifford said. “I’ve seen kids in their last match really trying like crazy, and that will happen.’

Published on April 3, 2003 at 12:00 pm