Fordham Men’s Tennis was defeated last weekend in a 6-1 loss to the Marist College Red Foxes at the Cary Leeds Center in the Bronx.
Fordham started the match well, with graduate student Nick Mueller and senior Giorgio Soemarno picking up a 6-4 win against Marist freshman Jose Catala and sophomore Nick Suhanitski. Following suit, senior Nicholas Kanasirev and sophomore Dhillon Virdee-Oakley took down Red Fox freshman Oliver Thoeny and sophomore Alex Thompson in another 6-4 victory. In the final doubles match of the evening, Fordham sophomore John Mascone and senior Bingru Chen fell to junior Paolo Flores and graduate student Alejandro Casteneda with the same scoreline as the rest, 6-4.
Marist would seal the matchup in singles play, with the Red Foxes ending the night undefeated. However, this was not due to Fordham’s lack of trying. The Rams took three of the six matches to a fifth set.
Mueller took victory in his first set against Thoeny, defeating the freshman 7-6. Thoeny fought back in the second set, earning a 7-5 victory before ultimately winning the final set 6-3. This two-set comeback would be the tale of the night for Fordham as Soemarno and Kanasirev met the same defeat.
Soemarno took the first set from Casteneda through a 6-3 victory. However, Casteneda returned in the form of a convincing 6-2 second-set triumph, followed by a 7-5 defeat of Soemarno in the third set.
Meeting the same fate as his teammates, Kanazirev was beaten by Catala after dropping the second and third set via a 7-5 and 6-3 defeat despite also achieving a 6-3 victory of his own in the first set.
This loss comes from a narrow 4-3 victory over Binghamton University at the Cary Leeds Center.
In that matchup, the Rams again found success in the doubles department, with the duo of Mueller and Soemaro opening the competition with a 6-3 victory over sophomore Ronin Lotlikar and junior Kyle Weekes. Moscone and Chen followed suit with a 7-5 win against sophomore James McPherson and freshman Matt Carlson despite needing an extra game to do so.
Fordham’s singles victories came from Kanazirev, Mueller and Mascone, with the latter two winning in comeback fashion.
Kanazirev defeated Weekes after winning the first set 6-2, then dropping the second 6-5 before ultimately achieving victory convincingly with a 6-3 victory in the third set.
Mueller competed against Lotlikar in a singles matchup that saw Mueller going down early through a 7-5 first-set defeat before winning the last two sets with an identical score of 6-2.
Lastly, it was Mascone versus McPherson in an exciting match-up that saw McPherson winning the first set via tiebreaker before Mascone came back to win the second by a score of 6-2. Mascone clinched the game and the entire match with a 6-3 victory in the third and final set.
After splitting these past two matchups, the Rams will look to return to their winning ways as they take on Monmouth University on the road on Sunday, March 10, at 2 p.m.
