Georgetown Knocks Off
2-Time Defending Champ
Georgetown, Virginia Tech and Virginia Advance to National Championship
Mid-Atlantic Section Co-ed Tennis On-Campus Champion Georgetown, finalist Virginia Tech (VT) and third-place University of Virginia (UVA) advanced to the 2008 National Campus Tennis Championship to be held April 17-19 in Cary, NC.
To qualify, the teams had to finish in the top three out of 13 college club teams, competing from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, at the Tennis On-Campus Mid-Atlantic Section Championships at the Boars Head Inn in Charlottesville, Va.
The Campus Championships followed the World Team Tennis (WTT) Format: one set of women’s singles and doubles, one set of men’s singles and doubles, and one set of mixed doubles. The no-ad games were added up for the five sets to determine the winner.
In the finals, Georgetown defeated VT 25-17, and in the semifinals nipped home-team UVA 25-23, while VT topped Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) 28-17 in the other semifinal. UVA earned third-place by defeating VCU 29-13 in the consolation match for the final national berth.
Georgetown captain Will Grosswendt said UVA, the defending two-time national finalist, was the toughest team to beat.
The Hoyas were up by four heading into the mixed doubles and they lost 6-3. So they are ahead by one game. If UVA wins one more game, the teams will go into a tiebreaker.
Grosswendt was serving up 40-30 and needed to win the next point for the match. He got his first serve in and hit several volleys deep to force an error for the victory. “It is pretty tense,” said Grosswendt, who plays tennis for the competition. “If they would have won that last game, we would have gone to a tiebreaker.”
The Hoyas won both singles matches decidedly, but lost all three doubles matches by close margins. They won by outdistancing UVA in games 25-23. “You can lose more matches but win more games,” he said. “When every game matters, it makes it more of a team effort.”
Grosswendt will be making a return trip to nationals with the Hoyas, who went last year as an at-large team, falling to third-place Penn State.
The Hawaii high-school grad said campus tennis is fun and competitive. “Some players can definitely play college tennis.”
He added that the Hoyas had an overwhelming response for players this year. “It is the biggest club sport at Georgetown,” he said. “We have 120 people.”
Grosswendt likes the WTT format. Only two matches are contested at once at adjoining courts. The players play men’s and women’s doubles first. Men’s and women’s singles are next. Then mixed doubles are last.
“I like the excitement,” he added. “We have two matches going at once, and both teams get into cheering for their teammates.”
The Hoyas (whose team members are Grosswendt, Jay Sykes, Alexandra Miller, Andrea Pazmino, Tedd Richardson, Nick Calta, Fernando Gentil, Samantha Baxter and Morgan Breck) sailed through the Gray Flight with an unbeaten 2-0 record over second-place U.S. Naval Academy and third-place James Madison University.
VT (whose team members are captain Henrique Lage, Brad Wakely, Russ Mammei, Mike Vaughn, Caroline Koch, Saki Kadotani, Jackie Holt, Lisa Kaiser, Kristy Lippard, and Russ Taylor) earned a semifinal berth by going undefeated and downing second-place University of Maryland (Baltimore County) and third-place Johns Hopkins University.
Defending Mid-Atlantic Champion UVA (whose team members are captain Aaron Brownell, Rick Sherwood, Karl Blunder, Aaron Brownell, Krishna Balachander, Akeem Williams, Kristin Dunbar, Sara Heppe, Sabine Kronenburg, Katie Garrison, and Stephanie Macdisi) went unbeaten, winning the Red Flight to advance to the semifinals, followed by second-place University of Mary Washington, third-place George Washington University, and fourth-place Christopher Newport University.
All the Green Flight teams finished with a 1-1 record. VCU earned the semifinal berth by having a .03 higher winning percentage than second-place William and Mary. The University of Maryland finished third.
The three teams going to nationals will be joined by 37 other USTA Campus Championship place-winners, as well as 25 other teams entering the tournament through an at-large selection process. They are the best teams out of 500 college on-campus teams nationwide. Texas A&M is the four-time reigning national champion.