COLUMBUS, Ohio – Despite moving indoors to the Capital Center Fieldhouse, the Capital University men's tennis team took care of business in a thrilling 5-4 win over the visiting Baldwin Wallace University Yellow Jackets.
With the win, the Comets move to 9-13 overall and 3-3 in the OAC. Additionally, the win clinches Capital the No. 4 seed to next week's OAC Tournament, where they will host the No. 5 seeded Yellow Jackets on Tuesday. The time for said match is still to be determined.
"What an unbelievable win for our guys today," said head coach
Cody Hurley. "We had a slow start after dropping a couple of doubles matches, but boy, did we respond in singles."
Capital was set back 2-1 after doubles play. The one team point to go Capital's way came courtesy of
Alex Stout and
Spencer Surles at #2. The duo defeated Caleb Reed and Anthony Tosatto by a score of 8-4. Elsewhere,
Leonardo Abreu and
Colin Welch dropped #1 doubles 4-8, and
Aaron Askew and
Jesse Stevens fell at #3 doubles 0-8.
In singles play, Capital really dug in and endured a rollercoaster of a match as both teams exchanged the team lead multiple times.
Spencer Surles got things going by winning his #3 match 6-3, 6-1 over Anthony Tosatto to bring the team score to 2-2. The win for Surles was his 10th straight to finish the regular season. That was followed up with Abreu's #1 loss to Matt McGee by identical sets of 4-6.
Alex Stout's #2 win over Trey Kernan again tied things at 3-3. Stout won his sets 7-5 and 6-3.
Colin Welch then won #4 singles in straight 6-3 sets over BW's Adam Zeidler. BW then won #6 singles as
Aaron Askew was defeated 2-6, 4-6 – tying the match back at 4-4.
Jesse Stevens then won a marathon at #5 singles to give Capital the all-important 5-4 win. Stevens fell 5-7 in set one, then won set two 6-2. In the third set, he won the final four games to win the set 6-4 over BW's Jack Hindman.
MORE FROM COACH HURLEY
"The trio of
Alex Stout,
Spencer Surles, and
Colin Welch all played fantastic tennis today, picking up big conference victories."
"I am incredibly proud of
Jesse Stevens' performance today. He showed tremendous mental toughness to come back from 2-4 down in the final set to clinch the win."
"One of our goals was to finish Top-4 in the OAC this season, and we have accomplished that. Now we have to refocus and get ready to battle BW again on Tuesday."
UP NEXT
As mentioned, Capital will host Baldwin Wallace for a rematch on Tuesday. The time for that match is still to be determined and will be posted to athletics.capital.edu as soon as it is made official.
