BRONX, N.Y. – The Union College men's tennis team battled hard but suffered its first loss of the 2025-26 season on Sunday afternoon, falling to ITA #27 New York University by a 5-2 score in a non-conference contest at Stadium Tennis Center.
 
The Violets jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, sweeping the three doubles matches and also earning wins at the top-two singles flights. Junior Solen Bellemare earned a 6-4, 6-3 win over Shido Ito at third singles to break up the streak in his first match of the season, finishing off the first set with a break of serve and then jumping out to a 4-1 lead to start the second set.
 
Sophomore Arhan Gupta temporarily kept Union (4-1) alive as well with a comeback victory at the fourth flight, dropping the first set 7-5 to Jeh-Lei Fan before coming back for a 6-2 second set and then taking the supertiebreaker, 10-8.
 
First-year Simon Philip also took Cooper Kline to a supertiebreaker in their fifth-singles matchup, with the duo trading a pair of 6-3 sets to start the match. Philip had a pair of match points at 10-9 and 11-10 in the breaker, but Kline recorded the final three points to eke out a 13-11 victory.
 
Sophomore Vivaan Gupta nearly needed a supertiebreaker in his match with Boris Slesarev at the sixth flight, fighting hard after a 6-1 first set to force a second set tiebreaker before coming up short, 7-6 (7-3).
 
Union will return to action on Friday with a 2:30 p.m. match against St. Michael's College at Sportime Capital Region.