SAN ANTONIO — The St. Mary's University Men's Tennis team tied the best 10-match start in school history with a 4-1 victory over NCAA Division III No. 15 Washington (Mo.) on Monday evening.
The Rattlers are now 9-1, matching the 2021-22 team that also won nine of its first 10 matches, and began 11-1 before finishing 17-7 at the NCAA South Central Regional.
On Monday, the match was postponed for several hours due to inclement weather in the San Antonio area, and WashU played an earlier match at Trinity across town. The two teams decided with the late start to play clinch format, so the remaining matches after a team reached four points would be unfinished.
"The guys have to be very proud of themselves after waiting around due to this morning's rain," said Director of Tennis
Bill Macom. "We had opportunities to win the doubles point, but didn't quite regain the momentum after we built leads at number one and two, but we are still learning. Our singles level was really good this evening against a really top-caliber tennis team. Everyone there was a witness to one of our better matches in recent years."
The Bears (2-4) fought back to take the doubles point. St. Mary's opened the evening with a 6-2 victory at number three doubles as the French duo of
Florian Smalto (Paris) and
Victor Velter (Perpignan) improved to 2-0 on the year. WashU responded with a 6-3 win at number two, and then the number one team of Colin Fox and Jeremy Sieben gutted out a 7-6 (7-5) victory over freshman
Ollie Eriksson (Austin, Texas) and junior
Louis Hein (Hamburg, Germany).
The Rattlers didn't let the doubles affect them negatively, as all four victories came in straight sets.
Junior
Leonardo Fabbri (Faenza, Italy) got things started with a 6-2, 6-2 win on court two, while sophomore
Lincoln Baldonado (Glendale, Ariz.) won 6-4, 6-3 at line six for his third-straight win to give the Rattlers the 2-1 edge.
Sophomore
Lucas Castillo Sanchez (Wesley Chapel, Fla.) was tied 4-4 in the first set before winning three of the final four games to take the first set 7-5, and then he got a break of serve in the second for a 6-4 victory at number one singles to move to 9-0 this spring.
Freshman
Nikita Gavrilonoks (Riga, Latvia) clinched the victory for the Rattlers on court three, winning 7-6 (7-5), 6-1 over Coleman Merce to improve to 8-1 in singles play.
The Rattlers don't get much time to recover, as they host Case Western Reserve on Tuesday at 10 a.m. The Spartans are 11-2 on the year and ranked No. 3 in Division III.
