Violet Tennis Pair Fall in Semifinals of Wilson/ITA Northeast Championship
09/30/07
Two-time defending singles champion, senior co-captain Mikhail Gurevich, and junior co-captain Calvin Chou were both defeated in their respective semifinals matches of the Wilson/ITA Northeast Championship on Sunday morning, September 30, at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Gurevich, the top seed in the tournament, was beaten by #3-seeded Mike Klimchak of The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) 6-3, 6-2. The two-time defending champion had defeated Jon Satkowski of St. Lawrence University 6-2, 6-4 in the quarterfinals on Saturday.
Chou, who had rallied to beat #2-seeded Matt Pierson of TCNJ 5-7, 6-1, 6-4 in his quarterfinal match on Saturday, fell to another TCNJ player, Eric Ferriere, in Sunday's semifinal. The final score of that match was 6-4, 6-4.
"Both of our guys played well despite obvious fatigue," said NYU head coach Horace Choy. "However, they faced a pair of very good players who have had success against them before."
"TCNJ is solid top to bottom," Choy explained. "We always battle them in dual matches, so there was no reason to expect anything different today."
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 posted an 8-4 victory over Paul Sun and Joe Shawky of RPI, then upset TCNJ's #3-seeded pair of Klimchak and Jonathan Yu 8-6.
Gurevich and junior Craig 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
There was no team scoring.