Results

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY (April 29, 2013) – The Liberty League Men's Tennis Championship title has returned to Vassar! The Brewers defeated Liberty League #1, Nationally #27 and Northeast Regionally Ranked #5 Skidmore College, 5-2 Monday afternoon in Walker Field House.

Senior No. 1 Andrew Guzick scored the Championship-clinching point against Skidmore's Jimmy Sherpa. The mood in the field house could be described as electric with Vassar ahead 4-2 and with all four of the Brewers' seniors out on the courts. “It feels amazing,” captain Guzick said. “We haven't beaten Skidmore since my freshman year and it's been a long time coming.”

Vassar will wait to see if it receives a Pool C bid to the NCAA Tournament as the Liberty League champion will not receive a Pool A (automatic) bid until 2014. Selections will be released at NCAA.com Monday evening, May 6.

Freshmen Daniel Cooper and Christian Phelps were the first Brewers to pick up wins in singles. Cooper defeated Gabe Steerman, 6-2, 6-4 and Phelps toppled Jonah Epstein, 6-1, 6-3. “When you're playing a match, the one thing you try to do is to just pay attention to your own court, but it was hard to not see what Phelps and Coop (Cooper) were doing on their courts when they were about to close them out,” Guzick said. “I just told myself to take it one ball at a time, one point at a time and just trying to stay in the moment in order to close out my match.”

Guzick and Cooper combined for three of the five wins today. The pair defeated Sherpa and Epstein, 8-5. They were mimicked by seniors Dan Freeman and Nick Jasso, who took on Kit Green-Sanderson and Nick Tong for an 8-5 win and a 2-1 Vassar lead after doubles.

The Brewers finished their regular season with a record of 7-12 and 3-1 in the Liberty League. Along with the three wins in the tournament, they look forward to their NCAA journey with a 10-12 overall record.

“I'm really proud of the team and how hard we fought. We needed a day when everyone came out. In order to beat a team like Skidmore, we all needed to be clicking and that's what happened,” Guzick said. “It's the end of the season. Everyone is in good shape and we had a battle with RPI yesterday but everyone wanted it so bad today. Fatigue was not an issue; we were running on adrenaline today and we just wanted it more. We had a tough season this year and even though we had a lot of losses, we played a lot of Nationally Ranked opponents.”

When the match ended, Jasso was up in his singles match, 4-6, 6-3, 4-0.

“We played an incredibly tough schedule this year, and we traveled a lot playing mostly away matches. We did this totally focused on being able to play under pressure during the Liberty League Championships,” Head Coach John Cox said. “The tremendous effort of the players on this team over the last three days proved this to be a successful strategy. They played like champions today against a very tough, nationally ranked team. I am very pleased for them to have achieved this championship during their career and more specifically, for the four seniors. This championship was our single focus all year long.”