SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Junior Jesus Sosa won a pair of matches to remain alive in the main singles draw and lead the Union College men's tennis team on day one of the ITA Northeast Regional Championships, hosted by Skidmore College at the McCaffrey-Wagman Tennis and Wellness Center and the Saratoga Regional YMCA.
 
Union won a total of six matches on the first day of the weekend, led by Sosa and senior Daniel Saxe with a team-leading three wins each between singles and doubles.
 
Sosa was the only Garnet Charger to earn a first-round victory in the singles main draw, taking down Nicholas Oh of Bard College by a 6-4, 6-0 score. He continued to stay alive with a second win over Gustave Viennet of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, posting a 6-2, 1-6, (10-7) victory to advance to tomorrow's round of 16.
 
Junior Arhan Gupta and sophomore Simon Philip both came a supertiebreaker short of joining Sosa in the second round. Gupta took the second set from 16th-seeded Mohammed Zahaan Siddiqui of Hamilton College, but came up three points short in the breaker in a 7-5, 4-6, (10-7) loss. The same fate befell Philip in his match with eighth-seeded Yuval Goodman of Skidmore, falling by a 6-4, 3-6, (10-7) margin.
 
Senior Solen Bellemare also dropped a 6-0, 6-0 match to top-seeded Kevin Titus Suresh of Saint Francis University.
 
Sosa picked up another win on Friday alongside Bellemare in doubles play, as the eighth-seeded pair cruised past Joshua Chu and Kaiser Zhao of the University of Rochester, 8-1 in the first round of the main draw. The tandem could not follow up with a second-round victory, however, coming one break short in an 8-6 loss to Felipe Postolov and Nathan Chan of The College of New Jersey.
 
Philip and Gupta suffered another tough loss together in the main doubles draw, falling again in a tiebreaker to Rochester's Ziwen Ju and Ethan Samora, 8-7 (7-3).
 
Saxe was Union's top performer in the "B" draws, winning twice in singles play and once in doubles. The senior won twice to advance to tomorrow's singles semifinals, knocking off RPI's Isaac Husni by a 6-3, 6-4 score and then outlasting Hobart College's Everett Reid in a supertiebreaker, 6-4, 2-6, (10-7).
 
Saxe teamed with sophomore Alain Uzelac to post an 8-1 first-round win over Bruce Lunder and Alton Swan in the "B" Round of 16 as well, but the pair came up short to TCNJ's Tomas Velez and Siddharth Arudi in the quarterfinals by an 8-5 score.
 
Sosa and Saxe will be back in action tomorrow for the second day of the ITA Regional Championships, with singles play set to begin at 9 a.m.