Flushing, N.Y. - The St. Thomas Aquinas College Men's Tennis team captured its first-ever ECC Championship in program history, with an exciting 4-3 victory over defending champs, Queens College, in the finals of the East Coast Conference Men's Tennis Tournament on Saturday afternoon at the Queens College Tennis Center.
STAC improves to 17-7 on the season and clinches an automatic bid to the NCAA Division II Men's Tennis Tournament, while Queens falls to 16-8 on the year and will have to await the decision-makers at the NCAA regarding their tournament fate.
The match came down to a tie-breaking third set between ECC Co-Player of the Year Odysseas Papaioannou and Omar El Shehawey at the No. 4 position with the team score tied at 3-3.
Queens opened the day winning 2-of-3 matches in doubles play to take the first team point. The STAC team of Eduard Simo & Ludovico Truffelli picked up the lone victory for the maroon and gold, 6-0, over the Knights Moritz Borges & Omar El Shehawey.
Queens took a 2-0 advantage to begin singles play (Kareem Rashad def. Eduard Simo 6-4, 6-3), before Ivan Laiz got the Spartans on the scoreboard with a 6-4, 7-5 triumph over Philipp Udhe. The teams would then trade victories, as Moritz Borges beat Ludovico Truffelli 6-2, 7-6 (8-6), before Maximilian Kendler got STAC within 3-2 with his 7-6 (7-2) 6-2 win over Mariano Bibiloni. Lennart Lehmann evened the score a 3-3 with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 victory over Lucas Demuth, setting up for an outstanding finish between Odysseas Papaioannou and Omar El Shehawey.
Papaioannou won the first set 6-4, before El Shehawey pulled even with a 6-4 victory of his own. In the third and final set, both sides battled hard and fought off match point opportunities by their opponents. However, it would be the senior from Thessaloniki, Greece that would rise to the occasion and take the final match point to secure his team's first East Coast Conference Tournament crown, by the score of 7-5.
