This past weekend at the ITA New England Regionals, Steven Milo ’13 shined for the men’s tennis team as they put forth an impressive showing. Two doubles matches and three singles matches went to deciding tiebreakers with the Judges winning three out of the five.
In doubles, the duo of Milo and Josh Jordan ’13 were seeded and faced Pierre Planch and Peter Yanofsky of Bates. In a tightly contested match, Milo and Jordan defeated the Bates’ tandem 9-8, prevailing 10-8 in the tiebreaker.
Alec Siegel ’15 and Mitch Krems ’16 upset the third-seeded pair of Doug Caplan and Kyle Wolstoncraft from Bowdoin. The match was also closely fought with the Judges taking a 9-8 victory and eking out a 7-5 win in the tiebreaker.
In singles, Milo was the story of the day. After earning the eighth seed, he faced Howie Weiss of Williams in the first round. They split the first two-sets, with Milo winning the first set 6-2 and Weiss winning the second set 6-4, but Milo seized momentum in the third set with a 10-4 win in the super-tiebreaker.
Milo then proceeded to the second round where he defeated Dan Carpenter of Trinity College in straight sets, 7-5, 6-2 to advance to the Round of 16.
While Milo had great success in his singles play, Jordan and Krems were not as successful as they both lost in third set super-tiebreakers.
Jordan fell to Alex Schidlovsky of Williams, despite winning the first set 7-5 as he went on to lose the second set 6-4 and then bowed out after a 10-6 loss in the tiebreaker.
Similarly, Krems won the first set 6-2 in his match against the seeded Casey Grindon of Bowdoin before losing the second set 6-1 and the tiebreaker 10-4.
On the second day of the tournament, Krems and Siegel were unable to move on in the doubles bracket, dropping a tight match to the Amherst duo of Mark Kahan, the top-seeded player in singles, and Russell Einbeinder, 9-7.
Milo and Jordan defeated the Tufts pair of Ben Barad and Nick Telkhedzhiev 8-4 to move on to the quarterfinals. They were unable, however, to move to the semifinals as they fell to Matt Micheli and Trey Meyer of Williams, 8-5.
Milo continued his strong showing in the singles bracket as he defeated Jay Glickman of Tufts in the Round of 16 in straight sets 6-3, 6-3 to reach the Elite Eight.
In the quarterfinals, Milo faced the No.1 seed of the tournament, Mark Kahan of Amherst. After Kahan won the first set 6-3, Milo fought back and took the second set 6-3. In the deciding third set, Kahan defeated Milo 6-3.
After a series of strong performances during the past month, the Judges will conclude their fall season on Friday when they travel to Bates College for the James Wallach Invitational.
