Results (HTML)
West Windsor, NJ - The No. 5 seeded Wagner men's tennis team was defeated in the Northeast Conference (NEC) semifinals by the No. 1 seed, Bryant University Bulldogs, 4-0 on Saturday afternoon at the Mercer County Tennis Center.
With the loss, the Seahawks finish with a 9-14 overall record while the Bulldogs, who advance to Sunday's championship contest, improves to 11-11.
"With primarily a young and talented group of student-athletes, I am very proud of what our team was able to accomplish this season," said head coach
Jason Sinkoff, who concludes his first campaign as the Seahawks coach. "Seeing all their hard work on the courts and, most importantly, in the classroom, pay off translated into us having the success we did. I know that it isn't a great feeling to lose, but, as I stressed to my team, it is a lesson that we will take and use to fuel us in the offseason as we train harder for we have our sights on an NEC championship."
Bryant won both No. 1 and No. 3 doubles, 6-4 and 6-2 to secure the first point of the overall match.
In singles action, the Bulldogs were to able to claim victories in No. 3, No. 5 and No. 6 singles play, as Bryant claimed a 4-0 triumph to advance to Sunday's championship round.
The 2015-16 season brought much success for the Seahawks. In late Septemeber, it was an all-Seahawk championship final in the Doubles "C" bracket of the Hofstra University Invitational. Freshman
Ilya Kneppelhout (Woubrugge, Netherlands/Scala College Secondary School) and sophomore
Charlton Boyd (Shreveport, LA/Loyola College Prep) squared off against
Allen Wang (Clovis, CA/Buchanan) and
Jakob Mostyn-Kolb (Melbourne, FL/Melbourne) in the championship round with Boyd/Kneppelhout cruising to a 6-3 victory.
For the second consecutive season, five members of the team posted double-figure single wins total, led by Boyd (16). Kneppelhout picked up 15 singles wins while Wang and freshmen
Eric Poland (Fort Meyers, FL/Bishop Verot), who clinched the NEC quarterfinals for Wagner, and
Dale Sandy (Durban, South Africa/Kersney College Secondary School) each had 11 singles wins.
2015-16 marked the third time since 2002 that the Seahawks reached the NEC semifinals round. One of the proudest moments came off the court, as part of the NEC Canned Food Drive Competition, the Wagner men's tennis team collected the most canned and non-perishable items for the Seahawks' 20 sponsored athletic teams.
Wagner doesn't lose a player to graduation this season as all ten players are set to return as sophomore and juniors.
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