St. John's University Athletics
St. John's University
Columbia Classic
Men's Tennis Ends Tournament Play At Columbia Classic
1/29/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Jan. 29, 2008
QUEENS, N.Y. - The St. John's men's tennis team competed in the 2008 Columbia Classic this past weekend. It was the team's final tune-up before starting the spring season next week.
In doubles action, after suffering a tough loss in the first round, the team of sophomore Martin Kosut and freshman Pavel Cerny earned their way to the semifinals of the consolation bracket before falling to Harvard's pair of Aba Omodele-Lucien and Dan Nguyen. In the main draw, the tandem of juniors Artem Vlasenko and Alex Svetlakov defeated Columbia's Ilia Shatashvili and Magdy El Mihdawy, 8-4, before dropping a close match to Harvard's Ashwin Kumar and Sasha Ermakov, 9-7 in the quarterfinals.
Vlasenko also made it to the quarterfinals in Flight A of the singles competition, where he met up with Kumar from Harvard once again, but the Crimson Tide senior prevailed 6-4, 6-2. In Flight B, Svetlakov defeated Yale's Josh Lederman, 7-6, 6-1, in the round of 16 before falling to Josh Goldstein of Cornell, 6-4, 6-1 in the quarterfinals, while Harvard's Mike Kalfayan held off Kosut 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 to move into the quarterfinals. The C-Flight saw three Red Storm tennis players knocked out in the Round of 16, while freshman Pavel Cerny made it to the quarterfinals with a 6-1, 6-3 match win over West Nichols of Cornell. Cerny dropped his quarterfinal match against Nicholas Pisecky of Marist, 7-6, 3-6, 6-3.
The Red Storm returns to the court for the first match of the spring season next Friday, Feb. 8, when the team squares off against the Bulldogs of Yale University. The match is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. at Tennis Central in Woodbridge, Conn.
Players Mentioned
