I’m here with one purpose today: to break down the Northeast ITA Regional from last weekend! It’s normally one of the weaker ITAs, especially compared to the one just a few hours drive to the east in New England, but it has produced a fair share of great matches, stories, and D3 tennis stars through the years—with 2019 being no exception. I think I’m going to do every single article stream-of-consciousness style this year, so let’s jump right in.
Where else to start than with the singles champion, Sebastian Castillo-Sanchez from RPI? A perennial contender, he was really the best player in the tournament to never have won this tournament, making him all the more deserving to finally get it done in his senior year. SCS made the semis as a freshman (loss to Leung, Skidmore), the quarters as a sophomore (loss to Koulouris, Skidmore), and the finals as a junior (loss to Dubrovsky, Hobart). With those kinds of consistent results, as well as being one of the top players in the region during dual matches as well, it’s nice to see Sebastian get over the hump, and do so in quite dominant fashion by the way. SCS didn’t drop a set, and his closest match was in the finals, which was still a fairly comfortable 6-4, 6-3 win.
Kudos also go out to Matthew Michibata from TCNJ for an unexpected run to the final. I’ve been told in the past that the kid has a solid game and his results haven’t really been a good indicator of his level, so it’s not completely out of the blue, but still—a run to the final with a win over the defending champ (Dubrovsky) is quite a nice coming out party. Also worth pointing out, as I’ve done before, that Michibata clearly didn’t take the summer off, as his UTR page shows he played in several tournaments and got a bunch of competitive matches under his belt over the past few months. Don’t discount what kind of difference that can make, especially at ITAs!
That segues nicely into a broader thought that I had over the weekend as I was following ITA results: Fall results really seem to be dominated more and more by underclassmen as the years go on. Generally incoming freshmen are playing the most tennis in the summer of anyone, and by the time players are rising seniors, chances are they’re working or have an internship in the summer and aren’t really training as much. There’s more time to overcome this by the spring, but I think I should stop being surprised fall results. This is all the more reason to praise SCS, by the way! I’m sure the guy has plenty of other stuff going on in his life the summer before his senior year of college, but he clearly had the drive and motivation to do what he needed to do to keep progressing with his tennis.
Let’s also take a moment to bring up two guys, both freshman from Istanbul (not Constantinople), Turkey that trained at Weil Academy in California—Alper Kulturel (Skidmore) and Kaan Ayman (Hobart). No doubt these two know each other well, and both had great runs with Alper making the semis and Kaan making the quarters (both lost to SCS) on top of solid runs at previous fall tournaments this year. Alper and Kaan figure to play in the top half of their lineups as freshmen, and I’m pumped for what could be a fun Liberty League rivalry for years to come.
Some other guys that I want to mention: Yudai Teruyama (RPI sophomore) for fighting through some nasty cramps in a third set tiebreak loss to Kulturel, Justin Wain (TCNJ sophomore, owner of questionable haircut) who fell 7-5 in the third to former champion JT Wynne (Skidmore), and Rob Dotterer (Hamilton junior) for getting past Suraj Mahtani (Skidmore) 3-6, 7-6, 7-5 to make a nice run to the quarters. I also want to call out @D3Retired aka Alex Lee, former RPI player/assistant coach who tweeted the following at me on September 20th.
That being said RPI’s Twitter game has been in free fall for two years
— Alex Lee (@D3Retired) September 20, 2019
I respect the defense of SCS, but RPI’s Twitter was the best of the weekend, giving scores, a little bit of commentary without being obnoxious, videos, and even some Periscope (as did Hobart and Rochester). So while you may not be running the account anymore, Alex, whoever is nowadays is holding it down quite well.
Now let’s touch on the doubles quickly. I feel like this draw is usually insanely wide open, but this time around the favorites all pretty much held to form, with Wynne/Williamson, Dubrovsky/Anderson, and Castillo-Sanchez/Imrie all making the semis. Props of course to Wynne/Williamson for continuing their nice partnership from last year (QF at NCAAs) by taking the title and earning All-American honors for the second year in a row, and also credit to Dubrovsky/Anderson for backing up their title last year with a return trip to the final. It was such a cool thing to have Hobart at the ITA Cup last year, and it’s almost as cool to have them there again. If they end up playing Luther, I’ll jump for joy. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fourth semifinalist team of Sahaj Somani and Pasquale Procaccino (Rochester). I believe these two were playing 3rd doubles last year for the Yellowjackets—quite a jump to go from that to the semis of ITAs, taking out solid teams from TCNJ and RPI on the way. Overall Rochester was pretty unremarkable in this tournament, so this was a nice bright spot for them.
I’m not sure if I’ll have a full ITA Cup article, but I will indeed be following along and hopefully taking to Twitter with some takes. On the one hand, I think it’s awesome that we’re going to have the likes of Hobart, TCNJ, Luther, and McMurry all at the Fall National Championship, but on the other hand, it’s hard to really get that pumped and feel like it’s a true national championship given how many top teams and players won’t be represented. That’s nothing against those that qualified, more just a comment on the whole ITA system.
Anyway, I’ll leave it at that for now. Good to be back in the swing of things, with even ASouth jumping on the article train and our group chat starting to have the occasional mention of D3 tennis interspersed with the degenerative gambling discussions and yesterday’s HORRENDOUS pizza takes from AVZ.