ORLANDO, Fla. – The Ursinus men's tennis team opened its Florida spring break trip by dropping a competitive 6-3 match to Wittenberg at the UTSA National Campus on Monday morning.
With the loss, the Bears fall to 1-2 overall as they played their first of four matches down in Orlando this week. Meanwhile, Wittenberg of the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) improves to 4-4 overall.
Wittenberg won two of the three doubles points to take a 2-1 lead in the match. Ursinus started strong as the duo of sophomores Lars Jespersen and Will Oberholtzer edged Brayden Kopp and John Devito 8-6 at the first doubles spot. Sophomores Darby Rogers and Rob Ritchie were defeated 8-5 in the No. 2 doubles spot by Jake Stockhausen and Kyle Fout, while the duo of senior Simbarashe Kanjanda and junior Noah Mandel fell 8-3 at the No. 3 doubles spot to Roy Jensen and Joe Patton.
Jespersen battled through a tough match to win a dramatic 0-6, 6-3, 10-3 decision over Kopp at the No. 1 singles spot to keep the Bears alive in the match. However, the Tigers picked up a pair of wins as Patton edged Oberholtzer 6-4, 6-4 at the No. 2 spot and Stockhausen defeated Ritchie 7-6, 6-3 at No. 3. Mark Trinka won a 7-6, 1-6, 10-7 marathon at the No. 4 spot over Rogers to clinch the match before Ethan Libby followed with a 7-6, 6-4 win over Mandel. Sophomore Ethan Yu closed the match by getting Ursinus the win at the No. 6 spot by defeating Fout 6-3, 6-4 at the No. 6 spot.
Ursinus returns to action tomorrow, March 8th as they will play a pair of matches in Orlando starting with Otterbein at 8 a.m. and finishing with Emerson at 5:30 p.m.