The College of Staten Island men’s tennis team saw their season come to a close this afternoon at the hands of bitter rivals, Hunter College, in the CUNYAC Semifinal round at the CSI Tennis Center. The Dolphins reached the semifinals after downing #6 seed John Jay 5-0. The Hawks were able to down the Dolphins 5-2 to move onto the finals which take place on Thursday afternoon.
Staten Island would take an early 1-0 lead over the Hawks after the duo of Akaki Dundua and Tao Lin cruised to an 8-4 victory on court three. The tandem of Matt Vesci and Andrew Adia had an early 4-0 lead over Nasser Ghaffer and Florimond Le Goupil but the Hawks rallied back to knot the match up at 1-1. Raymond Hwang and Chris Pinto were the third team to finish and fell 8-3 to give the Hawks a 2-1 lead heading into singles.
Joel Cantila was able to give Hunter their third win of the match after he defeated Adia 6-1, 6-1 on court three. Alex Tsui brought the Dolphins within one as he was able to push Hamza Sadhra aside on court six with a 6-1, 6-0 victory. Vesci was locked in an entertaining match on court one that was unable to crown a victor as the Hawks would pick up their fourth and fifth win over Pinto and Dundua to give the Hawks the five points the needed to secure victory and move onto the finals.
The Dolphins’ season comes to a close with a 10-6 record. The Dolphins have been knocked out in the semifinal round two of the last three years and haven’t made it to the finals since their 1-5 loss against Baruch College in the 2013 season. The Dolphins lose just one senior so look for this team to improve next season and continue building on their success they had during the regular season.
