Gurevich and Chou Advance to Semifinals at Wilson/ITA Northeast Tennis Championship
09/29/07
Two-time defending singles champion, senior co-captain Mikhail Gurevich, and junior co-captain Calvin Chou have both advanced to the semifinals of the Wilson/ITA Northeast Championship, which is being held this weekend at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Gurevich, the top-seed in the tournament, defeated Jon Satkowski of St. Lawrence University 6-2, 6-4 in the quarterfinals after having gotten past Greg Katz of Vassar College 6-4, 6-3 in his first match on Saturday morning.
On Friday, Gurevich defeated Matt Chin of Hobart College 6-0, 6-2, then beat Gregory Kreitzer of Hamilton College 6-2, 6-2.
Chou rallied to beat #2-seeded Matt Pierson of The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) 5-7, 6-1, 6-4 in his quarterfinal match. He had defeated Jared Karelbach of Skidmore College 7-5, 6-3 in his opening match on Saturday.
On Friday, Chou beat the University of Rochester's Ryan Kovaleski 6-4, 6-3, and Jared Karlebach of Skidmore 5-7, 6-0, 10-3.
"Both of our guys are match tough, so these good results don't surprise me," said NYU head coach Horace Choy. "Hopefully, they can both bounce back tomorrow after long, touch days today."
Junior Craig Berger, after advancing to the third round with victories over Skidmore's Jeremy Hogan (6-2. 6-1) and Drew University's Jon Pivor (6-1, 6-0) on Friday, was beaten by TCNJ's Eric Ferriere 6-1, 6-1 on Saturday.
Chou will now face Ferriere in one semifinal on Sunday, while Gurevich also faces a TCNJ player, #3-seeded Mike Klimchak, in the other semifinal.
"TCNJ is solid top to bottom," Choy explained. "We always battle them in dual matches, so there's no reason to think that anything should be different here."
In doubles play, Chou and freshman Matthew Gross were eliminated 8-2 in Saturday's quarterfinals by Zhi Wei Ko and Ari Zeevey of Stevens Institute of Technology.
On Friday, the Violet pair had posted an 8-4 victory over Paul Sun and Joe Shawky of RPI, then upset #3-seeded Mike Klimchak and Jonathan Yu of TCNJ 8-6.
Gurevich and Berger, seeded #2, won their first-round doubles match on Friday, defeating John Traver and Han Cong of RIT 9-7. However, the NYU duo was then eliminated from the competition after suffering an 8-6 loss to Taylor Borda and Danny Wolk of Ithaca College
Competition at the championship continues on Sunday morning.
There is no team scoring.