Lions Tennis Fails to Clear the Net This Weekend

With the men splitting their first non-conference matches of the season and the women losing to both of their opponents, this weekend provided mixed results for the Columbia tennis teams.

Squeaking out a win against Binghamton, 4-3, and falling unexpectedly to Radford, 5-2, the men faced tough competition all weekend. Binghamton, the Lions’ first opponent, fought fiercely in opening doubles matches. Sebastian Dietz and Faisal Mohamed, playing second doubles for Binghamton, clawed their way to an 8-6 win against Columbia’s Mark Clemente and Jon Wong. Columbia’s brilliant but unpredictable duo of Bogdan Borta and Justin Chow won 8-5 in the first doubles position, and Dan Urban and Magdy El Mihdawy pulled out a thriller in the third slot, 9-8 (4). Players on the Binghamton side cried foul, accusing the Lions of cheating on line calls. Charges met with countercharges, and an umpire closely observed calls on both sides for the rest of the match.

Columbia quelled Binghamton’s uprising by winning at the top and bottom of the lineup in singles. Clemente, the Lions’ number one player, cruised against Dietz, 6-2, 7-5, paying him back for doubles. At second singles, Borta breezed by Mohamed, 6-2, 6-4. Playing in the sixth position, Dan Urban trumped Binghamton’s Sven Vloedgraven, 6-3, 6-4. A bench player for most of last year, Urban is back in the mix.
After their win against Binghamton, the Lions lost unexpectedly to Radford, 5-2, coming off of last season’s 6-1 victory over the Highlanders. Jon Wong and Kevin Kung earned victories at third and fifth singles, respectively.

The women’s team, taking on Boston University and Boston College, fell hard. Though the final scores of both matches seem to reflect blowout losses for the Lions, head coach Ilene Weintraub said that “the girls played their hearts out, and that’s all I can ever ask of them.”

First up for Columbia were the Terriers of Boston University, in both teams’ season openers. The Terriers started strong, sweeping the doubles matches and losing a combined total of six games in the three matches. The Lions did not fare any better in singles, losing all six of the matches in straight sets to lose the overall match 7-0. Weintraub credited freshman Stephanie Zilberman with playing a solid match, despite her 7-5, 6-2 loss at number three singles.

On Sunday, the Lions took on the Boston College Eagles in a match where the final score did not reflect Columbia’s several outstanding performances. The Light Blue’s number one doubles team of Nina Suda and Natasha Makarova lost a heartbreaker, 8-6, and conceded the crucial doubles point. Though the Eagles dominated the singles matches, the Lions received a fantastic performance from sophomore Carling Donovan, who won her singles match.

Despite the losses on both the men’s and women’s sides, both teams maintained positive outlooks on the rest of their seasons.

“It’s always a great experience, especially for our younger players, to play competitive matches,” Weintraub said, “And they should leave us well prepared for the Ivy League season.”

Men’s senior captain Jared Drucker, facing a similar situation, noted that “all these matches are leading into the Ivy season. Anything can happen.”