ORLANDO, Fla. – The Union College men's tennis team closed out its Spring Break trip with a second straight victory, outlasting Oberlin College by a 4-3 score on Wednesday morning at the USTA National Campus.
It was a total team effort for Union (4-7) on the day, as seven players recorded one win each to squeak out the victory.
Coming off of yesterday's win, Union started strong by earning the first point of the day in doubles action. Senior
Austin Gregory and first-year
Vivaan Gupta needed only 22 minutes to take down Max Brose and Oliver Knijnenburg at third doubles, 6-1, and the tandem of senior
Ben Jacobs and first-year
Jesus Sosa clinched the point soon after with a 6-2 first-doubles victory over Shawn Lisann and Brady Huggett.
After Oberlin (3-8) evened the match with a win at second singles, first-year
Arhan Gupta put Union back in front with a 6-1, 7-5 win over Oliver Faranda at sixth singles, breaking serve at 6-5 to finish off the match. The Yeomen tied the match again at two, but once again the Garnet Chargers quickly responded as sophomore
Solen Bellemare posted a pair of 6-3 sets to defeat Ben Tichauer in fourth-singles action and put Union one match away from a win.
With two matches remaining and Union players losing the first set in both, it would require a comeback to finish off the victory. Both sophomore
Daniel Saxe and first-year
David Wang responded after losing the first set to win the second and force decisive supertiebreakers. In his fifth-singles match with James Foster, Saxe rattled off seven straight points in the breaker to take a commanding 8-2 lead on the way to a match-clinching 4-6, 6-3, 1-0 (10-3) victory. Wang battled hard at the top flight against Enrique Margain even after Saxe's match had finished, but came up two points short in the breaker in a 6-4, 4-6, 1-0 (11-9) defeat.
Union will return to New York for the remainder of the spring schedule beginning on Thursday, April 3 with the team's non-conference finale against SUNY Oneonta at 4 p.m. at the Union Tennis Courts.
