The Spire

Aiden Konold ‘26

Chief Sports Editor

The Holy Cross men’s tennis team started the season off strong with a home opener win over Southern New Hampshire University, September 8. One week later, the Crusaders continued their strong play at West Point in the Army Shootout. 

Key to the team’s early success is junior captain Camilo Illanes. Prior to the start of this season, Illanes ranked seventh in Holy Cross tennis history with 19 singles victories. 

So far this season, Illanes won two singles matches, one at home against Southern New Hampshire and the other in the Army Shootout. Illanes also added three doubles victories in the Crusaders’ two events. 

The Holy Cross coaching staff relies on Illanes’ success on the court to lead the program, but even more important, especially this season, is Illanes’ ability to lead his teammates in his first season as a team captain. 

On September 6, just two days before the start of the 2024 fall tennis season, Holy Cross director of tennis Brad Walulak officially named Illanes and senior teammate Matt Maggiacomo as this year’s team captains. 

“He deserves it and wants it, you don’t find that a lot,” said second-year assistant coach Alana Wyatt. “You don’t find kids who really want it.”

When Walulak first recruited Cam when he was a student at Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring, Md., he saw tons of potential. That vision followed Walulak as he started coaching Cam his freshman year at Holy Cross. 

Cam tends to arrive at the Sinnott Family Tennis Facility well before his teammates to warm up. When coaches arrive, shortly before practice to set up, they notice Cam is already there. 

Days before this interview with Coach Wyatt, Walulak walked up to his assistant coach and told her that Cam has taken four steps forward since he started here his freshman year. 

“His [Cam’s] jump from his freshman year to now, his junior year, has just been an astronomical change,” Wyatt said. “His confidence, his motivation, his momentum has just shifted, and he’s super hungry to just go as far as he can.” 

During the summer, Cam plays a circuit of summer tournaments and participates in an extensive weight training program. This past summer, Cam won the first doubles Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) tournament in Holy Cross history. In the singles interaction of the tournament, Cam won four singles matches en route to the finals. 

“And basically [Cam] took himself to where, you know, he wasn’t as confident, and now he’s probably the most confident on the team,” Wyatt said. “He really, just truly works so hard. And it’s not that he works hard and it doesn’t show he works hard, it shows right away.”  

Last season, Cam captured Holy Cross’ first victory over Navy since Walulak took over as the men’s head coach in 2014. The video of Cam taking down his singles opponent, removing his hat and tossing it into the air, raising his arms to the sky, and clinching the victory for his team all while his teammates surrounded him, was viewed over 85, 000 times. 

The Crusader victory over the Midshipmen was the number seven upset in the country at the time. It also gave Camilo a confidence he did not have before. But he did not realize at first that his team even needed his match to beat Navy. 

During one of his teammate’s matches, Cam looked at Wyatt and thought that his team had already won. Wyatt looked at Cam after, and told him that he still needed to win. 

“We need you to win,” Wyatt recalled telling Cam. “And then we win overall.” 

“Oh, okay,” Cam replied. 

In Cam’s clinching singles match, he found himself down two sets to one. Cam had a match point in the second set, but lost it. He went down 0-3, but at that point, Coach Wyatt told Cam to just give his match everything that he had. 

“I just told myself, I can’t lose this match,” recalled Illanes. “And I fought back and then won the tiebreaker, and I was just happy for the team. And I was happy that we finally won one of these close matches.” 

After Cam won, and earned his team the victory over the Midshipmen, Coach Walulak, a man who very rarely shows emotion, cried. 

“Just to have the mental toughness to be down, to lose two match points and win, come back and win and just like, really want it,” Wyatt said. “I think that changed everybody’s outlook going forward into this season too, it changed everything.” 

This season, Cam is embracing his role as a team captain, and takes many of the same tools that make him successful to make his team successful. 

Cam remains an encouraging teammate, no matter how he performs. He is always one of the first people to offer words of encouragement or a shoulder to lean on when he notices that one of his teammates is not right. He tells his teammates to complete the highest amount of reps that they can in the weight room. 

And when Cam’s coaches decided to pair him with Will Donnelly, a freshman, in doubles, he took on the role and performed. 

When Donnelly first stepped foot on campus, the Holy Cross coaching staff was not quite sure how his play would best suit the team. 

After the tennis team’s first three practices of the 2024-25 season, however, the coaching staff noticed just how excellent Donnelly played in doubles. 

“He was one of the best doubles players we’ve ever seen,” Wyatt said of Donnelly. “And putting somebody like Cam, who’s very consistent with someone who’s very aggressive at the net, it makes it really easy to win matches.” 

Illanes and Donnelly won their first doubles match together in dominating fashion. They beat their opponents, Marcos Castanada and Sebastian Eckert from Southern New Hampshire, 6-0. 

“Cam’s confidence and his maturity and his playing style, I think really helps Will coming in as a freshman, because it gives him sort of that ease,” Wyatt said. “He (Will) has someone on his back, who knows what he’s doing.” 

In his two years on the Holy Cross tennis team, Cam has experienced the win against Navy, but also the tough singles losses, when he has given a match everything that he has and still lost. 

As a team captain, Cam instills in his teammates that no set is ever really over, no matches are really over. 

“If you keep fighting, you can find comebacks,” Illanes said. “I think I’ve done a lot better just not giving up, and just staying engaged in a match, even if I got down. So just kind of coming back from, like, down a side, or down the break, or whatever it is, just coming back. I think in college tennis, it’s really easy to do that with momentum. And our team gets really loud and encourages everyone really well. So I think that also helps with coming back and tough matches.” 

As a teammate, Cam constantly shouts words of encouragement to teammates, whether that be on the tennis court or in the classroom. 

“I think just letting them know, if they never fall behind in class, that there’s a lot of good resources here, like the Writers Workshop,” Illanes said. “And also just telling them, when we go away and travel, you [let] your professors [know] in advance, get your work done in advance, but just kind of try and help with the freshmen if they ever fall behind. Let them know what to do.” 

To build team chemistry, Cam plays basketball with teammates at the Jo and enjoys team dinners, sometimes off campus at Buffalo Wild Wings. This summer, Cam went to a Goose concert with teammates to unwind. 

Prior to their first match together, Cam and Will spent time together away from the court, chatting to get to know each other and establish camaraderie similar to the way sports broadcasters spend time together leading up to a broadcast to pick up on each other’s tendencies and to sound more natural once on the air. 

As the year continues and Cam grows more comfortable in his new role, he plans to motivate everyone to work hard, similar to his predecessors.  “What I talked about with coach is just kind of motivating everyone to work hard and kind of do what Declan O’Flynn and Will Kelleher did last year, just kind of motivating everyone to stay on track and work hard,” Cam said. “And I think this year, we have a chance of going really far in the Patriot League Tournament, but we got to stay working hard and put in the work that BU and Navy [have]. So I’m excited to start the year.” 

Image courtesy of Holy Cross Athletics

Web Edited by Zexuan Qu ’28