St. Louis, Mo. - The DePauw men's tennis team traveled to St. Louis, Mo. over the weekend to participate in the USTA/ITA Men's Small College Central Region Championships and walked away with one individual winner.
Junior Nate Wallace won the collegiate singles bracket. He was seeded fourth in the field of 64 players and won six consecutive matches to claim the championship.
Half of those wins came against other seeded opponents. Wallace defeated No. 1 seed Robert Stroup (Case Western) in the championship (6-2, 6-3), No. 2 seed (and teammate) Matthew Quammen in the semifinals (2-6, 6-3, 1-0) and No. 7 seed Darius Loghman-Adham (Kenyon) in the quarterfinals (6-3, 6-0).
Then in the first three rounds, he defeated two conference opponents, Nathan Neal from Wabash (6-0, 6-1) and Vilius Sulnis from the College of Wooster (6-0, 6-1). He also beat Karl Fehn (Lake Forest College) in the second round (6-1, 6-1).
Meanwhile, Quammen had a nice showing of his own after being taken out by Wallace. He claimed wins over Victor Flynn from Trine (6-0, 6-1), Rohit Bhagat from Case Western (6-7, 6-2, 1-0), Constantinos Alevizopoulos from Denison (6-4, 6-4) and Adam Collins from Case Western (6-1, 6-4).
Senior Nick Thompson won his first match 6-1, 6-1 but was knocked out by the No. 1 seed Stroup in the second round 6-7, 2-6.
In the open singles bracket, junior Patrick Farrell and senior Alec Kaczkowski had the best showings, advancing to the round of 16 out of a field of 128.
Farrell took three straight set wins before falling to No. 5 seeded Brandon Metzler from Kalamazoo (6-2, 6-1). Kaczkowski needed three sets to win two of his matches and lost steam against No. 2 seed Nicolas Chua (7-6, 6-0).
Elsewhere in the bracket, John Daseke and Gregory Frauenheim advanced to the second round, while Alexander Bertolini, Daniel Rodefeld and Harold Martin could not escape first round losses.
Finally in doubles, three groups advanced to the round of 16 from the field of 64 in the open doubles bracket. They were the teams of Wallace and Daseke, Santen and Martin and Kaczkowski and Rodefeld. Quammen and Farrell lost in the round of 32.
In the collegiate doubles bracket with 32 teams, Bertolini and Frauenheim and Thompson and Makowiecki won their first round matches but lost in the round of 16.
