Hopkins men’s tennis, currently ranked 16th in the country by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA), won a pair of critical matchups this past week. The Blue Jays, now 11-4 overall, remained undefeated in the Centennial Conference with a convincing 9-0 win over Muhlenberg on Saturday. The next day the team traveled to Pittsburgh where they battled the 13th-ranked Tartans of Carnegie Mellon for a dominant 8-1 victory.
The Saturday contest was the less taxing of the two run-away wins for Hopkins. Muhlenberg entered the weekend without a win — they were 0-6 overall. The Blue Jays struck first, in convincing fashion, when freshmen Sam Weissley and Ed Corty swept their third-doubles match, 8-0. Juniors Andy Hersh and Jeff Kamei then followed suit, dropping just one game en route to a second-doubles win.
Hopkins polished off the doubles competition with an 8-4 win at the first position led by seniors Jacob Barnaby and Warren Elgort. Singles play was not much different for the Jays, as freshman Jensen Reiter, second-singles, and junior Morgan Dauer, fourth-singles, both completed sweeps.
Hersh headlined the match for Hopkins, handling first-singles 6-3, 6-0. Weissler and Corty also captured singles victories, and freshman Joonas Karjalainen won at sixth-singles, 8-1.
The battle with the Tartans was a more highly anticipated matchup. JHU travelled to the Steel City as the underdog, as Carnegie Mellon was the highest ranked team the Jays had faced since second-ranked Emory on March 22nd.
At first-doubles, CMU defeated Barnaby and Elgort to gain a 1-0 lead, but Hersh and Kamei even things up with an 8-4 win at second-doubles. In the final doubles match of the afternoon, however, Hopkins freshmen Tanner Brown and Erik Lim had their backs against the wall, trailing 6-3.
The young duo staged a terrific comeback, winning the next three games to force a tiebreaker in which they won, 7-2.
Hopkins used the momentum from the Brown-Lim comeback to sweep every singles match. The most intriguing singles pairing came at first-singles where Hersh, the third-ranked player in the Mid-Atlantic region, defeated the fourth-ranked player, junior Duke Miller of CMU, 6-3, 6-4. Also adding wins for Hopkins were Brown at second-singles, Elgort at third, Reiter at fourth, Lim at fifth, and freshman Noah Joachim at sixth.
Hopkins returned to action on Tuesday to take on McDaniel in Centennial Conference. The Blue Jays crushed the Green Terror, 9-0, who also entered the game defeated in conference play, now 0-8. The win clinched the top-seed for Hopkins in the upcoming Centennial Conference tournament, scheduled for the weekend of April 28th.
Again, it was the usual suspects for Hopkins. Hersh won with ease at first-singles, 6-0, 6-0, and Karjalainen did the same at sixth-singles. Freshmen Ben Hwang and David Greenbaum also handed in dominant victories for the Blue Jays. Hwang cruised at both second-doubles and singles, and Greenbaum swept his fifth-singles match and also teamed with Karjalainen to win third-doubles in the closest match of the day, 8-5.
The Blue Jays will play host to two different squads on Saturday, taking on Washington College in conference competition at 11 a.m. before playing fellow intrastate rival Salisbury at 2 p.m.. They will then road-trip to Fredericksburg, VA on Sunday to face Mary Washington.
Playoff action will commence the following week.
