Hello again, boys and girls. The season may be done, but we are not! There are a few more articles to be posted over the next week or so, starting with the first of two bracket challenge interviews! This year, two of our long-time readers/challenge players came out victorious. Jordan Krasner won both the team and doubles brackets, so he gets first crack at the interview. As you may or may not know, Mr Krasner and D3AS have had their Twitter squabbles in the past, but it appears they may have finally buried the hatchet. At school, Krasner was popular enough to inspire a fake Twitter account! Now, he’s joined the real world, but that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t have time for DIII. Congrats, Jordan!
1) Ok, Jordan, who are you and how are/were you involved in D3 tennis?
JK: Jordan Krasner. I graduated from Washington & Lee University last year (2017) where I had a pretty solid playing career I guess.
2) What are you up to these days after graduating?
JK: I moved to Chicago last November and I work for Accenture as a consulting analyst. Still playing a decent amount of tennis too.
3) Why did you chose W&L?
JK: I chose W&L because it offered the best combination of the three things I wanted in college: academics, tennis and social. It is not as well-known nationally as the most elite liberal arts schools (Amherst, Williams, Middlebury etc.) but it has a number of unique qualities that make the experience so much different (in a positive way) than attending your typical liberal arts school.
4) What are your thoughts on W&L’s past season and going forward?
JK: It was definitely a tough year for my Gennies. They lost some extremely close matches to Mary Wash and Hopkins early on and everything kind of unraveled from there with some team issues (that I won’t get into here) later on. Harry Shepherd was obviously the bright spot up top qualifying for individuals but overall not our best season. Going forward the squad is still really young and they have a solid class coming in (three 3 stars). Hopefully the new guys can play some doubles because that was our clear weakness (again).
5) You’re very active on social media, what do you really think of D3AS?
JK: There’s definitely some history between on us on Twitter. When I first started playing I was like why is this random guy writing about me/my team when I’m pretty sure he’s never seen any of us play. It actually pissed me off a little bit. I think those feelings have come and passed and more recently I’ve just been joking around with him pretty much. I obviously have never actually met him but I’m sure he’s a good dude.
6) What is your best memory of playing D3 tennis?
JK: Definitely beating NC Wesleyan in the first round of the NCAA tournament my junior year after getting swept in doubles. Our team’s season was in the tank after midway through our #1, Michael Holt, tore his ACL and a week later our #2, yours truly, had to get my appendix removed and miss four weeks. We ended up almost losing our conference (which we almost never do) and no one (including ourselves) thought we were gonna beat the Beeshops. And then we shocked the world.
7) Who was the toughest opponent you ever played?
JK: Lots of choices here but I’m gonna go with Rafe – he thoroughly whooped my ass twice during my junior year. The most impressive thing in my opinion was how fast he beat me when we played in the NCAA tournament (and won before two of his teammates beat two of mine. Normally I’d be the one doing that in our conference tournament – I never thought I would be on the opposite end of one of those)
8) Give a shoutout to somebody on another team (or just an entire other team) who you admired/always exhibited great sportsmanship
JK: Has to be Daniel Levine. Only played him once but he’s a great guy both on and off the court
9) You tied for first in the team bracket, and won the doubles bracket this year. How did you have such a good feel for this year?
JK: My job hasn’t been too demanding so far so I was able to follow all the scores and some of the content you guys put out. I bet (and lost) $20 to D3AS on Indoors FanDuel so I followed that weekend pretty closely but I really just went with my gut with these picks. I ended up only getting three picks wrong and just thought Middlebury was the best team (that top 4 was nasty). That being said, in the doubles bracket I just got completely lucky – it’s an absolute crapshoot.
10) What happened to your singles bracket? Or were you just all in on Midd?
JK: I actually went with JJ over Cuba in the 1st round so I definitely wasn’t all in on Midd. Picking my friends to make runs certainly didn’t help with Harry losing in the first round and Levine going down in the second. I also got burned by Urken again (he ended my career at NCAA’s last year) by picking him to lose in round one. Mad respect though – the kid has a huge game.
11) Any future bracket tips?
JK: I like CMS as an early pick to win it all next year.
Congrats again to Jordan for winning two of our three bracket challenges this year. We will be back with another bracket challenge winner, final Power Rankings, End of Season Awards, and more over the coming days. Stay tuned!
Krasner is a D3 legend on and off the court. Classy guy who represented the fighting spirit of W & L well. Would have been a different team if the Generals could have plugged him into the lineup this year. Always a friend of the Eagles and our 4 titles.