Tennis team co-captain Alex White '09 and teammate Stephen Sullivan '11 reached the doubles final of the ITA New England Championships at Williams last weekend.
The duo overpowered teams from Bates, UMass-Boston, Middlebury, and Trinity before falling to top-seeded Ben Stein and Amrit Rupasinghe of Bates, 8-5. One of the pair's most notable wins of the tournament came in the semifinals against second-seeded Trinity doubles team Gautam Samarth and David Yahng.
Individually, Sullivan and White both went far in the tournament. In their respective singles matches, Sullivan and White both made it to the round of 16 but fell to players from Williams. Sullivan lost to Jeremy Weinberger in a three-set match, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, while White was beaten soundly by Karol Furmaga, 6-2, 6-1.
Co-captain Alex Caughron '09 proved successful in his first-round match, defeating Middlebury player Jeromino Riefkohl by a score of 6-4, 6-2. In the second-round, however, Caughron faced a tough opponent in Amherst's Zack Lerner. Caughron was unable to keep up the energy necessary to go on to the next round and fell 6-1, 6-4.
First year Josh Cranin defeated MIT player Ken Van Tilberg to win his first-round match, 6-3, 6-4, but lost to Spencer Feldman of Trinity in a nail-biting super-breaker, 6-4, 2-6, (14-12).
Cranin had four set points in the super-breaker. "I should have won the match," he said. "My opponent was a really solid player and he's quite good but I had him on the ropes."
Oscar Pena '12 and Nico Fenichell '12 both fell in the first round; Pena lost to Middlebury's David Farah, 7-6 (4), 6-2, and Fenichell lost to Alex Chin, 6-7 (6), 6-3, (10-4).
"It showed me that I have to work on my game and change a lot of stuff," Finichell said. "There's room for improvement."
As their fall season winds down, the Polar Bears look to gain momentum in the last couple weeks of the season.
The team will play in the Bates Invitational in two weeks, where four singles flights and four doubles flights will contend. All members of the team will compete.