HILTON HEAD, S.C. – The Manhattanville men’s tennis team started its 2010 Spring Break trip on the right foot by working hard to earn a 6-3 non-conference victory over the College of Wooster on Sunday afternoon.
The Valiants had to work to earn their first victory of 2010, as the team dropped two of the three doubles matches to fall behind early. The lone doubles win on the Valiant side of the ledger came at the second flight, where graduate student Lance Dorfi (North Salem, N.Y.) and sophomore Dean Tahir (Yonkers, N.Y.) pulled out an 8-4 win over Steve Conroy and Matt Mandell.
For the most part Sunday’s singles matches were very closely contested, as three were decided by third-set supertiebreakers and another came within a game of doing the same. Two of the three went the way of the Valiants, and as a result they were able to pull away with the win.
Manhattanville’s top two singles players, first-singles junior Julian Oribe (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and second-singles sophomore Michael Capozzi (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), each had to go to a supertiebreaker but both came away with key victories. Oribe lost the first set to Matt Hoch, 6-4, but came back to win a 6-2 second set and then take the match in extra tennis, 10-5. Capozzi went the opposite route: he won the first set, 6-4, and dropped the second by the same score, but came back to win the supertiebreaker with ease, 10-3.
Dorfi and freshman Karim Mahmoud (Cairo, Egypt) also picked up key wins for the Valiants as well. Dorfi posted a workmanlike 6-3, 6-3 win over Brad Palanski at third singles, while Mahmoud earned one extra break in both sets to put away Conroy, 6-4, 7-5, in their sixth-singles matchup.
The easiest singles match of the day went to freshman Andres Rivera (San Juan, Puerto Rico), who was leading 6-0, 1-0 when fifth-singles opponent Ashvin Reddy retired due to injury.
Manhattanville (3-2, 0-0 Freedom) will be back in action tomorrow, when the Valiants continue their Spring Break schedule against Nebraska Wesleyan University beginning at 8 a.m. Wooster (3-2, 0-0 NCAC East) will face off with Hobart College tomorrow at noon.