This past weekend, the Case Western Reserve University men’s tennis team extended their win streak to 12 after hosting a three-meet weekend in the Mayfield Village Racquet Club. On Saturday, the squad bested both No. 21-ranked Washington and Lee University and Hobart College, securing 7-0 victories against the two teams and increasing their 7-0 wins to 14 for the season. The Spartans won all six double games and twelve single games across the two contests for the sweeps.
During the first contest against Washington and Lee, the Spartans claimed the doubles points with a pair of 6-1 wins from duo fourth-year Ajay Mahenthiran and third-year Justin Prochnow in third doubles and first doubles pairing third-year Anmay Devaraj and fourth-year Casey Hishinuma. The second doubles pair of first-years Jon Totorica and Leon Chen won 6-2 to sweep the doubles matches.
In singles play, the first CWRU win came from third-year Matthew Plunkett (6-1, 6-1), followed by Hishinuma (6-1, 6-2) and second-year George Kosseifi solidifying the Spartan victory with a 6-0, 6-2 win. The additional Spartan singles wins came from second-year Santiago Salazar Garza (7-5, 6-2), Devaraj (6-1, 7-5) and Mahenthiran (2-6, 7-5, 15-13).
Continuing with the energy from their win against Washington and Lee, the Spartans once again swept the matches. In doubles matches, Mahenthiran and Hishinuma finished first (6-1), followed by Totorica and Chen (6-3) and Devaraj and third-year Rohan Bhat (7-5).
The even number singles matches finished first with Kosseifi, Hishinuma and first-year Konrad Kwiatkowski winning No. 2 (6-1, 6-2), No. 4 (6-1,6-2) and No. 6 (6-0, 6-1) singles, respectively, to claim the Spartan win. Their matches were followed by Plunkett, Totorica and Mahenthiran, who bested their opponents in No. 3 (6-2, 6-0), No. 5 (6-1, 6-1) and No. 1 singles (6-3, 7-6 (5)), respectively.
The following day, the Spartans faced the Washington University in St. Louis Bears. CWRU began the morning contest with a thrilling battle for the doubles point. The Bears claimed the first win in third doubles against duo Hishinuma and Mahenthiran, but the Spartans tied the score with a 6-3 win of their own after Bhat and Devaraj bested their opponents in second doubles. The deciding factor for the doubles point came down to first doubles played by the first-year pair Totorica and Chen, culminating in a tiebreaker match in which the Spartans reigned victorious with a 7-6 (8) win.
Hishinuma extended his singles win to 83-22 after finishing first in fifth singles (6-0, 6-4) and currently stands one win short of the third most singles wins in program history. Following Hishinuma’s win, Salazar Garza finished second at sixth singles (6-1, 6-2), and Plunkett secured the Spartan win at fourth singles (6-4, 6-3). The following matches were close, and the Bears ended up taking both first and second singles to decrease their deficit, but a 6-4, 6-7 (6), 10-7 win from Devaraj secured CWRU’s 5-2 win over the Bears.
This Friday, the No. 5-ranked Spartans will face Otterbein University and No. 19-ranked Trinity University as they prepare for the following week’s matchup against No. 4-rank Denison University. The Spartans had previously fallen 2-4 to the Big Red during the ITA Indoor Championship earlier this year and will be looking to redeem themselves on April 11.