Winners of the first-ever CUNYAC Handball Tournament.
The City University of New York Athletic Conference hosted its first CUNY-Wide Intramural Championship of the year: Men’s & Women’s Handball at The College of Staten Island, presented by Municipal Credit Union. A resounding success, the tournament featured male and female handball players from ten CUNY campuses, including Baruch, Brooklyn, City College, CSI, Hunter, Kingsborough, Queens, LaGuardia, NYCCT and Queensborough.The morning began with an exhibition match organized by Wall Ball World LLC featuring Michelle Melendez, the Women’s Wall Ball World Champion, and Herman Mendez, a doubles World Champion. The match also included Jasmina Dukanovic and Carlos Mata of Wall Ball World. Soon after the opening match, CUNY Intramural Championship play began. The women’s bracket used a double elimination format with Heather Edell of CSI and Jane Chen of Kingsborough taking the title. These two young women – Edell, a sophomore studying Marketing, and Chen, a freshman physical education major – met for the first time competing in today’s tournament. “I saw the advertisements around campus promoting the event and decided to participate. Luckily, Jane’s brother encouraged her to take part and we turned out to be a great team,” commented Edell after the win.The men’s bracket featured sixteen teams with tough competition throughout the day. It would be the match-up of Hunter’s Robert Lee and Queens’ Tony Ferruggia that would pull out the win and gain the title of CUNY Champions. Lee and Ferruggia won each of the four prior rounds with a commanding 21-1 score. In the finals, however, the contest was closely contested edging out the runners-up in a 21-17 finish. Lee is a freshman at Hunter College with an undecided major, and Ferruggia is a transfer to Queens from The College of Kentucky where he studied Sports Management.”This was a fantastic start to the CUNYAC/MCU Intramurals Championship Series,” noted Catherine Alves, Strategic Planning & Special Projects Manager at CUNYAC. “Students across CUNY now have the opportunity to engage in competitive recreational sports across all other campuses, and meet their fellow peers. These events are valuable additions to our programming and will surely complement the CUNY student experience in a critical way.”The CUNYAC/MCU Intramurals Championships Series will continue throughout the entire academic year with chess and table tennis rounding out the fall semester, followed by co-ed indoor soccer, a 5K health run, co-ed volleyball, and co-ed basketball in the spring semester. Campus tournaments will be held for each sport and champions from the local events will convene at various CUNY campuses to name the University champion. Stay tuned to www.cunyathletics.com for all the latest.
