While people on campus were pairing up to take part in Valentine’s Day festivities over the weekend, the men’s tennis team participated in a pair of tennis matches that did not have a lovely ending for the Bulldogs.
A doubles victory from the duo Joel Samaha ’11 and Erik Blumenkranz ’12 for No. 70 Yale against Brown on Sunday was the sole Eli doubles victory at the Yale-hosted ECAC Championship.
[ydn-legacy-photo-inline id=”8086″ ]
The lone victory in the doubles competition along with three other singles victories for the Elis were not enough to hold off the Bears, who topped the home team, 4–3. The Sunday heartbreak followed another close loss Saturday, when the Bulldogs lost to Princeton 4–3, as well. The weekend’s results put the Elis under .500 on the season with a 2–3 record.
“We had high expectations going into the tournament so we are definitely disappointed with the results,” Blumenkranz said. “But give credit to the other teams for playing well. We will look to bounce back from this right away, however, and will use it as motivation come Ivy season.”
Rookie John Huang ’13 was the only Bulldog to notch two singles victories on the weekend as he defeated junior Kendick Au of Brown and freshman Matt Siow of Princeton. Before he and Blumenkranz topped the Bears’ No. 1 doubles pair, Samaha also defeated the Tigers’ Coleman Crutchfield on Saturday.
Marc Powers ’13 mirrored Samaha’s effort winning a doubles and singles match against Princeton, however he dropped the No. 1 singles match to Gorham of Brown the next day.
“We expected to beat both the teams that we lost to but I guess the lesson we learned was that every team is in the running to win Ivy League this year,” Powers said.
The Tigers went on to lose to Harvard and got swept by Cornell, 7–0, on Monday to complete their ECAC tournament run in fourth place. Brown finished tied for fifth and the Elis finished last of the Ivy competitors in a tie for seventh place.
After the disappointing results in the tournament, the men’s tennis team will look ahead to a series of non-conference matchups before rebooting Ivy League play in April. The squad next takes the courts Feb. 19 in Annapolis, Md., to take on Maryland-Baltimore County, followed by a match against host Navy the next day.
The Bulldogs expect a boost when they travel down to Maryland.
“We were without our senior captain [Connor Dawson ’10] one of our best singles and doubles players to injury but it looks like he’s going to be able to play next weekend so he can come back and play some matches,” Powers said.