Box Score TROY, N.Y. – The Union College men's tennis team fell to conference frontrunner and ITA #20 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by an 8-1 score in Liberty League action on Wednesday afternoon at Sharp Courts.
 
First-year Solen Bellemare earned the lone win of the day at fifth singles for Union (4-9, 2-3 Liberty League), but the Garnet Chargers also came a break and a tiebreak short in two doubles contests and also saw a first-set tiebreak and a third-set supertiebreaker go the way of Rensselaer (13-1, 6-0 Liberty League) in a match that was closer than the final score indicates.
 
While RPI swept the three doubles matchups, Union was close at both second and third doubles. Bellemare and classmate Keita Fukushima had a 7-6 lead on Joel McCandless and Tsubi Okada but could not get a final break and the Engineer duo escaped in a tiebreaker, 8-7 (7-3). Junior Seth Prusko and first-year Daniel Saxe also came one break short to Bryce Burnham and Jonathan McMillan, dropping the final three games in an 8-6 third-doubles defeat.
 
Bellemare provided the lone highlight in singles play, posting a 6-1, 6-4 victory over McCandless at the fifth flight. The first-year won the first five games in cruising to a first-set win, and then closed the second set by winning the final three games to complete the sweep. Senior Dimitris Binopoulos nearly pulled out a victory in his second-singles match with Andy Zhu, falling 3-6, 6-7 (7-5), (10-8), while senior Khai Ton came a few points short in his first-set tiebreak with Tasmay Shah in a 7-6 (7-3), 6-1 loss.
 
Union will return to action on Saturday with a 10 a.m. match at ITA #42 Vassar College.