The Columbia men’s tennis team will travel up to New Haven this weekend to compete in the Wilson/ITA Northeast Regional Championships with a greater than usual incentive to perform well. The finalists in both the singles and doubles draws of the tournament will automatically be entered into the prestigious ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, hosted by the University of Virginia from Nov. 6-9.
Regional Championships will feature 40 teams from the northeast, including all eight Ivy League schools. The tournament features a singles qualifying draw, singles, and doubles, and Columbia is well represented in the tournament.
The singles and doubles draws each feature eight seeds and Columbia has a representative in each draw. Junior Jon Wong is seeded fourth in the singles, behind Chris Clayton from Harvard, Brendan Lynch from Penn State, and Peter Capkovic from Princeton. Wong is the only seeded Lion in the singles draw, and of the eight seeds, six are from Ivy League schools, including three from Princeton.
In the doubles draw, Wong and teammate Bogdan Borta earned the second seed overall, behind the Harvard duo of Chris Clayton and Chijoff Evans. Wong and Borta are coming off a stellar performance at the All-American Tournament in Tulsa, Okla. where the two came just one match short of qualifying for the main draw in doubles.
Joining Wong in the singles draw are junior transfer Mihai Nichifor, seniors Borta and Dan Urban, and freshmen Haig Schneiderman and Ekin Sezgen. Schneiderman will open against Austin Longacre from Delaware and Urban is slated to play Marcelo Mazzetto from Buffalo in the first round. The rest of the Lions have byes in the first round as a result of a high regional ranking coming into the tournament.
In the first draw of the doubles draw, Nichifor and Schneiderman are scheduled to play a duo from NJIT. Sezgen and Urban are entered as a team, and drew a team from Sacred Heart University in the first round. Wong and Borta, seeded second in the doubles draw, were given a bye in the first round, and will play the winner of a match between teams from George Washington and Hartford in the second round.
Play is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. in New Haven, Conn. on Friday, Oct. 17 and the tournament runs through Sunday.
