KEARNEY, Neb. – Colorado Mesa men's tennis had to audible in a big way during the second of two duals played indoors Saturday at the Ernest Gundy Tennis Center. At the end of the day, CMU's depth and adaptability led to two massive wins against Division II opponents to get the spring season off and running.
The men started the day with a 6-1 win over Augustana, then recorded a 5-2 win over William Jewell in the afternoon. The win over William Jewell came after the Mavericks lost the doubles point and had to replace two players in between the doubles and singles portion of the dual.
Even though the first match started at 7:30 a.m. Colorado time (8:30 local), Colorado Mesa was ready to play. All three CMU doubles entries – the No. 1 team of
Tyler Landen and Jandre van Wyk, the No. 2 team of
William Leschig and
Diogo Manzano and the No. 3 team of
Jorge Abreu and
Tegan Hartman – defeated their Augustana counterparts 6-3 to give CMU the doubles point.
Henry Dornbusch evened the score for Augustana by beating Landen on court one 6-2, 6-1, but it would be all Mavs after that.
Emil Hultman won 6-4, 6-2 on court three and Manzano took down court six by a 6-4, 6-4 score.
Even the matches where sets went down to the wire all went CMU's way, as the Mavs went 2-0 in tiebreaks and won the only three-set match.
William Leschig defeated Nicolas LaPoint on court two 6-4, 7-6, winning the tiebreaker 7-2 to wrap things up and officially clinch for the Mavs. Abreu won his match 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 on court four. Jandre van Wyk was pushed to three sets by Augustana's Joseph Plachy, but recovered to take the match 6-4, 1-6, 6-4.
Against William Jewell, however, the Mavs dropped the first two doubles matches, with Augustana's No. 1 duo of Ugnius Bickauskis and Gage Foltz beating Landen and van Wyk, 6-4, and Julien Lafranchise and Max Quennery topping Leschig and Manzano, 6-3. Colorado Mesa's No. 3 duo of Abreu and Hartman won their match 7-5, but William Jewell claimed the doubles point thanks to the two wins.
In between doubles and singles, Landen and Manzano were yanked from the singles lineup, forcing the Mavericks to shuffle the deck to match up. The players who were scheduled to be on courts 2-5 (Leschig, Hultman, Abreu and van Wyk) each moved up a slot to play on 1-4.
Henry Scheck played his first match of the day on court 5 while Hartman entered the singles lineup at No. 6.
Hartman ended up being the first to finish, beating Ian Lewis 6-1, 6-2 and finishing a personal 3-0 day. Two more wins followed with van Wyk winning court four 6-0, 6-3 and Scheck winning court five 6-2, 6-0. After
Emil Hultman finished up on court two with a 6-0, 6-4 win, the comeback was complete as Colorado Mesa led 4-1 and clinched the dual.
William Jewell pulled a point back on court one when Bickauskis outlasted Leschig in a 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) thriller. But Colorado Mesa earned its fifth point when Abreu won his fourth match of the day 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (7-4) over Foltz.
The CMU men are now at 4-3, climbing back over .500 after an 0-3 start in the fall. They will be back in action next weekend at the Phoenix Duals, playing Western New Mexico and Arizona Christian on Friday and Ottawa University Arizona on Saturday.
