It was quite an eventful weekend for the Wittenberg men's tennis team, as the poor weather of March created a most unusual slate of five matches in three different states in the span of just 36 hours.
When the dust had settled, Wittenberg had won four of the five matches to improve to 13-3 overall on the 2012-13 season, heading into an equally busy three-week sprint to the finish. The home stretch starts this week with key Central Region matches at Case Western on Wednesday, April 10, and at home against North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) West Division rival DePauw on Saturday, April 13.
The weekend started with an early morning road trip to Crawfordsville, Ind., for the NCAC West opener at Wabash. Wittenberg was up to the task, taking a 7-2 decision over the Little Giants behind the play of sophomore Ian Streicker (South Lebanon, Ohio/Loveland), among others. Streicker won 6-1, 6-0 at No. 1 singles after picking up a doubles point at the No. 2 position with junior Sasha Topoyanskiy (Moscow, Russia).
The travelling Tigers then headed more than 230 miles west for a match against Fontbonne. Wittenberg took care of things even more quickly, sweeping Fontbonne 9-0 while dropping just seven games in the entire match. Sasha and Alexey Topolyanskiy (Moscow, Russia) were dominant in an 8-0 victory at No. 2 doubles before winning at No. 2 and No. 3 singles, respectively.
Also of note, junior Sam Wilke (Cincinnati, Ohio/Turpin) turned in a perfect 4-0 mark on the day, with singles and doubles victories against both Wabash and Fontbonne.
The winning ended Sunday morning, however, as 14th-ranked Washington University cruised to a 9-0 win over the Tigers. Alexey Topolyanskiy had the best showing, losing a third-set tiebreaker by a 14-12 score.
Back home in Ohio, a second set of Tigers held down the fort by claiming a pair of victories on Sunday, starting with a hard-fought 5-4 decision against visiting IU-East. Wittenberg was forced to rally against IU-East, which had lost twice by 9-0 scores to the Tigers in September, after losing two of three doubles matches. Freshman Dennis Gleason (Columbus, Ohio/St. Charles) came up with a clutch victory for the Tigers, staving off six match points in the second set before claiming the third set by a dominating 6-0 score.
Gleason had earlier paired with sophomore Jialang Woo (Shanghai, China) to win at No. 2 doubles. Woo also earned a three-set victory at No. 4 singles.
Rounding things out, Wittenberg was a 9-0 winner over Central State. Gleason and Woo rounded out their perfect afternoon with comfortable victories.