Lynn and Barry Advance to Florida Blue SSC Men's Tennis Title Match
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Rain once again dampened the Florida Blue SSC Tennis Championship on Friday, but all three scheduled men's matches were able to be completed despite the weather. Lynn and Barry posted semifinal wins to advance to Saturday's championship final, and Florida Tech posted a win in the backdraw.
After a quarterfinal bye, top-seeded Lynn cruised to a 5-0 victory over No. 4 Saint Leo in Friday’s semifinals.
Lynn’s combo of Luca Pavanelli and Alessio Iannozzi started the fun for the Fighting Knights with an 8-2 in over Aloua Adjenak and Jake Fleischer at #3 doubles for the first point of the match. Max Kouyate and Amaury Van Haelen provided the second point of the match for Lynn with an 8-3 defeat of Gonzalez-Tarrio and Antonine Raffaelli in the second doubles flight. Capping off the Fighting Knights’ sweep was the tandem of Vlad Cirla and Willi Wolfer dropping Saint Leo’s Matt Nicholson-Lewis and Victor Lozier 8-3 in the top doubles flight.
With the 3-0 lead in hand, Pavanelli put Lynn within one point of the overall match win in a 6-3, 6-0 throttling of Lozier at the third singles spot. At #2 singles, Cirla took care of Nicholson-Lewis 6-4, 6-2 to capture the overall match win.
In the other semifinal of the day, No. 3 Barry upended No. 2 Rollins 5-1. The Buccaneers raced out to a 3-0 lead with a doubles sweep. Romain Costamagna and Ollie Lemaitre kicked things off with an 8-2 win over Jeff Morris and Ari Davis in the #3 position. Marco Mokrzycki and Leo Vivas then staved off Lucas Jovita and Jason Alabaster 9-7 in the top flight. Daniel Schmidt and Fabian Groetsch completed the sweep at #2, winning a 9-8 thriller over Malte Christesen and Constantin Sturdza.
Jovita got the Tars on the board with a win in the top singles flight. He downed Mokrzycki 6-2, 6-2. Alas, it was all Bucs from there, with Vivas besting Sturdza 6-4, 6-3 at #5, and Costamagna defeating Christesen 6-3, 6-3 at #3.
Rivals Lynn and Barry will now meet in the Florida Blue SSC Men’s Tennis Championship final at 8 a.m. on Saturday at the Beerman Tennis Center. Lynn claimed a 6-3 victory in the teams’ regular-season meeting on April 11. The teams have exchanged the conference title for the past seven years, with the Buccaneers picking up four conference trophies and the Knights claiming three since 2005.
In a backdraw match, sixth-seeded Florida Tech defeated seventh-seeded Eckerd 5-0. In doubles, Nicolas Clerc and Michael Schmidt downed Dylan Randazzo and Stephen Felman 8-3 at #1. James McLane and Daniel Armellino took care of business at the #2 slot with an 8-5 victory against Connor Ohlsen and Madison Durley. Beau Fieldsend and D.J. Pate strolled to an 8-1 win at #3.
Clerc and Fieldsend quickly clinched the match in singles with a pair of straight set victories at #1 and #2. Clerc downed Randazzo 6-2, 6-0, while Fieldsend defeated Brian Hill 6-1, 6-3.
Florida Tech will face fifth-seeded Florida Southern in the fifth-place match at 11:30 a.m. at the Beerman Tennis Center.
An updated schedule, which reflects changes forced by two days of rainy weather, appears on the SSC Tennis Championship Central page.
