#23 Garnet Face Top Competition at National Indoor Championships
ST. PETER, Minn. -- The Swarthmore men's tennis team ran into a trio of nationally-ranked teams at the ITA Division III National Men's Indoor Team Championships, falling 9-0 to fourth-ranked host Gustavus Adolphus in the semifinal round on Friday night before dropping a 9-0 decision to sixth-ranked DePauw in the consolation semifinal on Saturday morning.
Swarthmore (1-5) picked up two doubles wins in the evening seventh-place consolation match before falling to 11th-ranked Mary Washington 7-2.
The Garnet earned an automatic bid in the National Indoor Championships after advancing to the quarterfinals in last year's Division III NCAA Championships. Swarthmore faces Mary Washington in the seventh-place consolation match on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m.
The top Swarthmore doubles pair, senior Jon Reiss and junior Jon Lo, lost to the #3 -ranked pair from DePauw before downing the top team from Mary Washington, Randy Loden and Eddie Carver, by a score of 8-6 on Saturday evening. The Garnet also picked up a point at No. 3 doubles as Mark Greenburg and Willy Nolan '10 defeated UMW's Evan Goff and Jon Pollak 8-6.
Reiss fought valiantly at No. 1 singles against Mary Washington's John James, ranked sixth in the country and second in the Atlantic South region, winning the first set 6-3. James came back to win the second set in a tiebreaker 7-6 (7-4) and Reiss was forced to retire down 3-0 in the third set.
The Garnet, ranked 23rd in all of Division III in the latest ITA FILA rankings, will travel to Europe for spring break, making four stops in Ireland and one in Italy from March 10-18. Once back in the United States, Swarthmore travels to Lexington, Va. to take part in the Washington & Lee Invitational on March 31-April 1.