Lords Tennis Rules the Court With Championship Win

Lords tennis repeated history with their North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) tournament victory last Saturday during  the team’s regional conference championship.

On Saturday, the Lords took on Ohio Wesleyan University, beating them 5-0, and Wittenberg University, whom they beat 5-1. On Sunday, The Lords played Denison University, winning 6-1 to take the 2012 NCAC Championship. In the three matches played this weekend, the Lords did not lose one singles match.

Unlike most tennis matches, tournament matches are played to decision. This means that the moment one team has won five out of the nine singles and doubles matches, the entire series stops. Due to the Lords’ decisive and rapid victories over the first two teams they played, for most matches, many players did not get past their first set.

Winning the conference tournament solidified the Lords’ invitation to, and their ranking in, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament next week. Therefore, this tournament has the potential to create a lot of pressure in a lineup that boasts multiple first years.

“I felt very good participating in my first conference tournament,” said Michael Razumovsky ’15. “There were a lot of people coming out to our matches. I think the entire team’s expectations before we came into the tournament was to win the tournament and get that NCAA banner.”

It was clear from the start that the Lords had their eyes on the prize, and their confidence matched their capability.

“We did what we set out to do, which was be efficient in our matches and come out with a conference title,” said Paul Burgin ’13.  “We played well in most of our matches; we had some holes, and we suffered some setbacks in the semifinals and the finals of doubles, but we bounced back well. I think the team’s singles play was pretty outstanding throughout the weekend, so I think overall we are pretty happy with our performance, and it is a good stepping stone to the NCAA tournament.”

The ease with which they took on the conference tournament demonstrated that the Lords are worthy of their first place title in the region. Now, they must live up to their ranking as fourth in the nation.

“It felt great to win the tournament and officially solidify ourselves as, most likely, the number four seed heading into the NCAA tournament,” Burgin said. “It puts us that much closer to our overall goal of making a deep run at the NCAA tournament. In the next week before NCAA, we are going to get out there, we’re going to practice hard and we’re going to work on things we could have done a little better in the conference tournament.”

The first round of the NCAA tournament is hosted by Kenyon and begins next weekend. If the men win all of their matches here, they will move on to the elite eight and pursue the rest of their matches in North Carolina.  “Once we get there,” Burgin said, “we’ll see what happens.”