The Kalamazoo ITA – Report Card

I’ll be the first person to admit that the Central Region has not gotten enough coverage so far this year.  Since our Central expert has left us, you Midwest enthusiasts are left with my expertise (or lack thereof), and I’ll do my best to give you some great recaps and previews.  I really hope I do this ITA justice, because in my opinion, it’s the second best regional tournament out there as it features 3 of our top teams (Kenyon, Wash U, Case) along with a ton of other great players.  Let’s get started with our team-by-team recaps!  *Cue me going through this draw a billion times*

Kenyon College – ITA Grade: C+

Man, Kenyon was really saved from a mediocre tournament by Sam Geier.  If you didn’t know, Geier actually ended up winning the tournament, which was a surprise to many, including me.  Geier, a sophomore, benefitted from a ton of upsets in the Central draw.  The only single-digit seed he beat was Sabada from Chicago in the finals.  That’s not to lessen the fact that he won, but I would’ve loved to see the victor take out a ton of seeds and kids he might go up against the rest of the year.  Either way, Geier capped a tournament in which he beat Cogan (Wash U), Klawitter (Case), and Sabada which is nothing to scoff at.  Good job by Geier and I’m looking forward to his performance in Nationals.  As for the rest of the Lords, I can’t be as complimentary.  The most surprising result of the tournament by far is Raz losing in the second round to the Wash U sophomore Cogan.  Now don’t get me wrong, Cogan is a very good player and definitely a player to watch this year.  You’d just expect a previous national semifinalist to make it past the second round.  But that’s why we play the matches!  In addition, we saw the #10 seed Haas go down in the second round to a fairly unknown Wash U player, who lost the next round.  Two other Kenyon seeds (Rosensteel #26, Kaye #30) performed pretty similarly to what we would have expected.  One thing I would also like to point out is the performance of the Lords freshmen.  With the losses of Burgin, Williams, and Ye, Kenyon is really relying on one or two of their class to make an impact.  So far, we had Dakich make the round of 16, eventually losing routinely to Klawitter from Case.  He might project as a #5 or #6 player based on this performance.  Fiaschetti, their highest ranked freshman, fell in three sets to a good Depauw player who just beat Reinbold of Case in the second round.  I’m pretty unsure of where Fiaschetti could have ended up if he didn’t have a tough draw.  Lastly, I’d like to point out that Michael Roberts, who was kind of an X-factor coming into the year, didn’t even show up for the tournament.  Not sure if this is because he wasn’t chosen to travel or other circumstances, but definitely not a great start for his college career.  Doubles was even more disappointing for the Lords.  Razumovsky mysteriously wasn’t in the tournament.  The farthest any Lords team got was the Round of 16.  Ugh.  The one silver lining for this team is that Heerboth is still a bright spot, and he just wasn’t available for the tournament.  Other than that, this team has a ton of questions in doubles and at every spot in their lineup – which is why they were one of my burning questions of the year.

Washington University Bears – ITA Grade: A+

As long as I write for this blog, I will always admire the Washington University Bears.  They came into the season losing their best player, and with a lot of questions about how they were going to turn out.  They answered all of those questions in this tournament alone.  I’m going to start off with the freshman class, which consists of 4-star Jeremy Bush, 4-star John Carswell, and 3-star Conor Bouchillion.  Unlike Kenyon, the Wash U freshman straight killed it.  Bush made the semis of singles, beating the #5 and #9 seed along the way before losing to eventual runner-up Sabada.  Carswell beat Case’s top player in Krimbill before losing to Bush in the quarterfinals.  Bouchillion, who was unseeded, beat #10 seed Haas of Kenyon before losing in the Round of 16.  In addition, Bush and Ross Putterman ended up winning the whole damn thing in doubles.  Great performance from the freshman crew.  Now for Josh Cogan, who was Wash U’s forgotten recruit last year.  Cogan, as I mentioned earlier, pulled the upset of the tournament by beating Raz in the second round.  Whether or not Raz is injured is irrelevant.  Cogan ended up losing in the round of 16 to the eventual champion Geier, so who knows how far he could have gone.  It will be interesting to see where or if he plays in the Wash U lineup this coming year with all the talent they have.  Tyler Kratky was Wash U’s other recruit last year, and he had an even better tournament.  Kratky took out the #12 seed in the round of 32 and then his own teammate Putterman in the round of 16.  This takes me to Putterman, who obviously lost in the round of 16 to Kratky.  I’m projecting him at a #3 or #4 player this year.  However, I’m also projecting him at #1 doubles this year.  He’s always been a good doubles player and it looks like he hasn’t lost a step despite playing without the other Putterman.  Moving to doubles, Wash U got two other teams into the round of 16 along with the eventual champions Putterman/Bush.  Basically the only disappointments for the Bears were Noack losing in the first round despite being the #8 seed, and Chu losing in the first round also.  I’ve never believed Noack to be a top player, but he can definitely hold his own in the #3-4-5 slots.  Overall, amazing tournament for the Bears and this is definitely a top 5 team this year.

Case Western Reserve Spartans – ITA Grade: B+

This was a pretty crazy tournament for the Spartans.  At the end of the day, they were able to get two players in the quarterfinals, and four total in the round of 16.  That’s a good performance considering the ridiculous amount of teams in this region.  Junior Will Drougas showed his experience and took down his teammate Fojtasek in the round of 16 after losing the first set.  Senior Eric Klawitter definitely surprised me by making the quarterfinals as well, eventually losing to the eventual champ 5 and 5 in a really tough battle.  “Klaw,” as they call him, is always a tough out.  Despite his unorthodox strokes, he is the definition of grit and grind.  I expect big things from Klaw at potentially #3-4 in a deep Case lineup.  A couple of disappointments in singles were the performances of CJ Krimbill and Derek Reinbold, two sophomores who made an impact on the Spartans last year.  Krimbill was defeated by a Wash U freshman in the match of the tournament in the round of 16.  Reinbold, who was switched around the lineup last year, got ousted in the first round by a DePauw freshman.  This was a somewhat disheartening start for these two sophomores in their follow-up campaigns.  One other random bright spot for the Spartans was the freshman Simhadri taking out Noack of Wash U in the first round.  Unfortunately, he was unable to continue that momentum as he was taken out by Dakich of Kenyon.  Now to move onto doubles, one of the most important aspects of the Spartans plan every year.  They’ve been known as a very good doubles team ever since they stormed onto the national scene a couple years ago, and they continue to have great coaching and fundamentals in that area.  I was excited to see the new teams of Drougas/Healey and Klawitter/Krimbill, as they’ll rely heavily on those two teams to get them leads against top teams.  Healey is one of the best doubles players in the nation in my opinion and this year brought an interesting dynamic as he is no longer playing with the graduated Kyle Gerber.  It looks like Case overall has some kinks to work out in doubles, but they did have these two teams make the quarterfinals, where both teams lost to Wash U.  The good news is that these two teams will definitely be solid teams moving forward, but they’ll need to improve their games and find that Case Western chemistry to take leads against top 5-10 teams.  Overall, Case showed they can play with the big boys, but can they breakthrough?

Chicago University Marroons – ITA Grade: A-

Damn, I was pretty effing excited about the Maroons ITA performance.  Every year, I count these guys out because they always seem to fail, but personally I think they are off to a good start after this tournament.  The story of their tournament seems to be the performance of Deepak Sabada, who proved once again that he is one of the best players in the Central by making it to the finals.  Sabada has a big game, and if he goes off on a certain day, he can beat anyone in the Central.  Us DIII enthusiasts are well aware of Sabada’s game, so I won’t spend too much time on him.  He’s clearly going to be Chicago’s #1 player here on out.  The most intriguing part of the tournament was the performance of Sven Kranz, who was one of Chicago’s two 4-star recruits they brought in this year.  Kranz actually made the semifinals, beating Drougas routinely along the way.  If Kranz can be a legit #2, which he looks to be, that’s a huge boost to the Chicago lineup.  We’ll see if they can keep up the rest of their lineup behind two potential studs this year.  The rest of the Maroons didn’t do too much that really catches my eye, except freshman Brian Sun (three star recruit) took down DePauw’s #1 player the past two years, Sammy Miles.  This was a pretty big-time result, considering no one really expected that much from Sun.  Can he be a #3 player for Chicago with the graduations of Brinker, Golovin, etc?  Doubles, meanwhile, was a very similar story.  The team of Kranz/Sabada had a ridiculous run in the tournament, taking out a ton of extremely talented teams en route to the finals.  Unfortunately, they came up JUST short, losing by all of two points in the championship super tiebreaker.  It must be really tough for Sabada to come up short in both finals, especially so close in the doubles.  Those two players are the source of any hope for this talented Chicago team this year.  I wasn’t expecting too much from many of these guys, and they proved me wrong.  I’ll give them an A- for an above average tournament.

DePauw Tigers – ITA Grade: C-

Remember the good old days when the Tigers were a legit threat to Trinity TX?  Those days are unfortunately long past us, as this team keeps taking hits in talent while they watch their direct competitors move ahead in the rankings.  Only two DePauw players even reached the round of 16, sophomore Alec Kaczkowski and Patrick Ferrell.  Kaczkowski was the a bright spot in singles, as he took out another highly regarded sophomore in Derek Reinbold of Case.  It’s very possible “Kaz” takes over the #1 singles spot, as Miles did not look great this past weekend.  Ferrell pulled another upset by beating Kreis of Wheaton, which isn’t necessarily a star upset but it’s definitely something worth nothing.  The rest of the singles performances for DePauw were lackluster, as their losses were not even noteworthy.  Doubles was a pretty similar story to singles for the Tigers, as they had one standout performance for the tournament.  This time, it was the veteran team of Sam Miles and Ben Kopecky, who have been playing together for a while.  Coming in as the #3 seeds, they took care of their quarter before meeting the red-hot Chicago team and falling short.  This is a legit #1 doubles team moving forward, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are in nationals at the end of the year.  It definitely would be a nice way to go out for this team.  Overall, this was definitely not a very strong performance from the Tigers.  They’ll need some better individual play here on out if they want their national ranking back.

The Others – Notable Performances

How many damn teams are in this region?! Holy shit.  Here are some notable performances from the lesser-known teams of the Central (boy, could we use D3Central back right).  Shoutout to Brandon Metzler of Kalamazoo College taking down Ravella of Chicago and another solid player from Denison.  Kalamazoo hasn’t had a slew of good players come through in a while, so this is a nice breath of fresh air for the Hornets.  Ryan Kreis and Josh Ward of Wheaton College made a bigtime run in the doubles draw.  Although it wasn’t surprising considering they were the #1 seeds, it’s nice to see a few players from smaller schools be nationally ranked and back it up.  I hope that they are okay, considering they had to pull out in the semifinals, which means it must have been serious.  Another team that had a pretty solid performance was Rajupet and Veltman out of Denison.  Denison hasn’t been anything worth noting in a while, but this was some fresh blood making some noise.  They ended up losing to the Wheaton team, but good job making it out of the quarter and getting some valuable match play in.

This was truly a great weekend of tennis in the Central region, and it was a great first look at some of the best teams in the nation.  The Central doesn’t get enough credit for bringing some of the true fundamental teams into national prominence.  They technically have three top level teams in Kenyon, Wash U, and Case, all who had decent or better performances.  This will make for an interesting year in the Midwest.