Valdosta (23-2) needed only one point with two singles matches on the court to take the title. The two remaining matches where number three singles with #32 Emanuel Fraitzl against #19 Christian Hansen and Andrew Sharnov against Konstantin Kutschenko. Fraitzl fell behind 4-0 in the third set and Sharnov fell back 4-1. The Bucs persevered and took both matches and the national championship.

The amazing Buccaneer comeback started with number six singles. Velez found himself in an early hole as he dropped his first set 6-0 to Kuech. The junior came back in set number two and took a 6-2 win. In the third set, with his team’s back against the wall, and falling behind a break at 4-3, Velez did not give up another game and put the Buccaneers back into the match with a 6-4 win in the third set. Barry still trailed 4-3 with Fraitzl and Sharnov still on the court.

At the end of Velez’s match, Fraitzl was down 4-0 and Sharnov was down 4-1 in the third set. With both their opponents battling cramps, Fraitzl won the next six games and tied the overall match at 4-4.

Sharnov won the next four games in his match and had two match points with a 5-4 lead in the set but could not capitalize on either. The senior lost that game and the next to fall back 6-5 against Kutschenko. Sharnov tied the match at 6-6 and the national title came down to a tie-break.

Sharnov took the first point of the tie-break then Kutschenko answered to tie things up. Sharnov rolled off the next five points, giving him four match point opportunities for a win. After Kutschenko narrowed the lead to 6-4, Sharnov landed a baseline forehand winner to win the NCAA DII Men’s Tennis National Championship.

Finishing first was number two doubles. Emanuel Fraitzl and Marco Mokrzycki went down 4-1 but fought back to trail just 7-6, but the #19 team of Daniel Dueren and Christian Hansen took the match at 8-6, earning the Blazers their first point of the overall match.

In the third flight of doubles, Sergio Velez and Andrew Sharnov went up 7-2 and looked to capture an early first point for the match. The Valdosta pair of Otto Lenhart and Frank Sickman came back to the cut the Buccaneer lead in the set to 7-6. However, the Bucs duo finished with an 8-6 win and tied the match at 1-1.

With the match tied, the number one doubles went down to the wire in a tie breaker. Barry had a match point when the tie breaker was at 6-5 and Valdosta serving. The #1 doubles team of Philip Pakebusch and Michael Kuech took the point on an ace by Kuech. Valdosta eventually grabbed the match on a well-placed lob over both Buccaneers who were at the net.

In singles, Valdosta took four first sets and looked composed to take the championship. At number two singles, #36 Svigelj fell 6-2, 6-1 to #5 Daniel Dueren. The Blazers collected a commanding 3-1 lead in the match.

The Buccaneers needed a lift with Valdosta only needing two singles wins to take the championship. Wimmer, ranked #42, delivered the Bucs only two-set win of the day. Wimmer went 6-4 in set one over the Blazer’s Lenhart then blanked Lenhart to take the match. Barry still trailed by one at 3-2 in the overall match.

Mokrzycki faced the challenge of taking on the #3 player in the nation, fellow German, Pakebusch. The top Barry player suffered a 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) loss. The win for Valdosta, put the Blazers a mere one point away from the national title with three matches still on the court.

Barry finished the season on a 12-match win streak and a record of 25-4. This is Barry’s eighth national championship overall, second for the men’s team and first for men’s tennis. The Blazers’ only two losses of the season came at the hands of the Bucs.

– Courtesy Barry University Athletics

A year ago here in Sanlando Park, her three-set thriller clinched Armstrong Atantic State’s 2009 NCAA DII National Championship. On Saturday, Kovacs finished off BYU-Hawai’i’s Shawni Porter in straight sets to give top-ranked and undefeated AASU its third consecutive NCAA Division II Women’s Tennis National Championship, 5-1 over the Seasiders.

The Lady Pirates (33-0) joined an exclusive group of schools to ever win three consecutive DII national women’s tennis titles - Chattanooga (1983-85), SIU Edwardsville (1986-89) and Saturday’s opponent, BYU-Hawaii (2002-04). The title is also the sixth in the history of AASU women’s tennis, second-most in NCAA DII history.

Kovacs and her fellow seniors – Martina Beckmann and Alisa Kagukina – form a core group who, along with junior Alida Muller-Wehlau, have won three straight NCAA DII National Championships for the Lady Pirates.

“We’ve had all these great players, but sometimes the national championships have straddled generations,” head coach Simon Earnshaw said. “Sometimes you’re lucky to get only one, but this group has managed to put three in a row together. If you think about the first year when they were here and compare that to what they’ve been able to accomplish, it’s a great testament to what hard work and a belief in what team effort will do.”

Beckmann and Muller-Wehlau got the match off to a successful start for AASU by winning a pivotal doubles point as play began. Kovacs and Novakova, ranked No. 7 in the nation in doubles, began with an 8-4 win at No. 2 doubles over No. 24-ranked Ayako Ikeda and Shawni Porter. BYU-Hawai’i answered with an 8-2 win by Jenny Chin and Salina Aranda over No. 23-ranked Kathleen Henry and Tina Ronel.

That set up Beckmann and Muller-Wehlau, ranked No. 3 in the nation in doubles and facing the No. 1-ranked BYU-Hawai’i duo of Yuan Jia and Elwin Li. The German duo won three straight points at 5-all to claim an 8-5 win and give AASU a key 2-1 advantage heading into singles play.

“I was confident once we won No. 1 doubles,” Earnshaw said. “I felt before the match that if we could get either No. 1 or No. 3 doubles, we would be in good shape. The 5-all game with Martina and Alida was key – and I think it was the biggest game of the match. And the extra work both put into their service game this year paid off.”

As singles play began, the Lady Pirates got off to a fast start, winning four of the first six sets. First to finish was No. 49-ranked Henry, who claimed a 6-2, 6-4 win over Sophia Simmons at No. 6 singles. No. 21-ranked Ronel beat Ikeda, 6-1, 6-3, about five minutes later.

Kovacs was already in her match-finishing game when Ronel’s match ended, and less than two minutes later, the senior from Szazhalombatta, Hungary, finished match point against Shawni Porter, 6-2, 6-2, to give AASU the national championship for a second straight season.

The 33 wins this season for the Lady Pirates sets a new school record, eclipsing the 32 wins by the 2008 team, and during the three-year National Championship run, head coach Simon Earnshaw’s Lady Pirates are an impressive 93-2.

“It’s amazing when you look back now, even from 2003, how we’ve been able to put this together,” Earnshaw said. “Realistically, if we were going to be able to win national championships over DII, we were going to have to equalize what BYU-Hawai’i has been able to accomplish since they’ve moved into DII. If you look back to 2003 and compare, we have been able to do that. The three national titles are a culmination, really, of the last seven years where we have only had five losses – if you keep up that level of success, the championships will come.”

“We’ve had a lot of great players come through our program since 2000, and I think the earlier players laid the groundwork for what we have been able to accomplish these last three years.”

– Courtesy AAU Athletics

The match came down to No. 5 singles, where AASU (30-1) sophomore Rafael Array and Barry’s Roman Werschel played a three-set match to determine the match. Array won the first set, 6-4, but Werschel rallied to win the second set, 7-5, and set up one set for the title. Array broke Werschel’s serve at 5-3, winAAning the pivotal point at 14-50 and giving the Pirates their second NCAA Division II Men’s Tennis title. Barry finishes runner-up for the fourth time in school history and ends its season at 27-3.

It was the first time since 2003 and the eighth time overall that the NCAA DII Men’s Tennis championship has been decided by a 5-4 score. The Pirates are the first back-to-back champions since West Florida in 2004-05.

In the regular season, the two teams met with AASU also winning that time out, 5-4, giving the Sanlando Park crowd an indication of how this year’s championship match might shake out.

FULL STORY

–Courtesy AASU

This year, it was Kovacs’ turn.

The junior from Szazhalombatta, Hungary, closed out a 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 win over Jessica Yanoff at No. 4 singles to clinch the No. 3-ranked Lady Pirates’ fifth NCAA Division II Women’s Tennis National Championship, 5-2 again, over No. 2-ranked Lynn (28-1) on Saturday afternoon at Sanlando Park in Altamonte Springs, Fla.

The Pirates (28-1) entered singles play needing just three wins, but Lynn won the first set in four of the six singles matches.

AASU now joins BYU-Hawaii (2002, 2003) as the only teams to win Division II Back-to-Back National Championships with both the men’s and the women’s teams. The Lady Pirates have also won back-to-back titles twice in school history, the first coming in 1995 and 1996. AASU evened its mark in NCAA DII National Championship contests at 5-5 – this was the Lady Pirates 10th appearance in the final. Lynn was making its seventh appearance in the finals and is 3-4 in those contests.

The win also avenged a 5-4 loss at Lynn back in March, the only loss this season for the Lady Pirates.

FULL STORY

–Courtesy AASU

The 16 preliminary-round tournaments will be conducted May 7-8, 8-9 or 7-9, with the winner of each preliminary-round tournament advancing to the finals in Altamonte Springs, Florida, hosted by the Central Florida Sports Commission and Rollins College, May 13-16.

The championships consist of a 16-team single elimination tournament. Each of the following eight regions will conduct two preliminary-round tournaments: Atlantic, Central, East, Midwest, South, South Central, Southeast and West. The selection of teams for the championships is based on prescribed criteria listed in the NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships Handbook and approved by the NCAA Division II Championships Committee.

For information pertaining to teams, dates and sites, please see below for regional brackets.

Twenty-one conferences receive automatic qualification into the 2009 women’s championships. Each conference and its automatic qualifier is listed below:

California Collegiate Athletic Association – UC San Diego
Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference – Philadelphia U.
Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association – Shaw
Conference Carolinas – Erskine
East Coast Conference – Concordia (New York)
Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Northwood (Michigan)
Great Lakes Valley Conference – Drury
Gulf South Conference – West Florida
Heartland Conference – St. Edward’s
Lone Star Conference – Abilene Christian
Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association – Northwest Missouri State
Northeast-10 Conference – Stonehill
Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference – St. Cloud State
Pacific West Conference – Brigham Young-Hawaii
Peach Belt Conference – Armstrong Atlantic State
Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference – California (Pennsylvania)
Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference – Nebraska-Kearney
South Atlantic Conference – Carson Newman
Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Tuskegee
Sunshine State Conference – Lynn
West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Charleston (West Virginia)

In the finals of the 2008 championships, Armstrong Atlantic State University defeated Lynn, 5-2.

FULL STORY

– Courtesy NCAA.com

The 16 preliminary-round tournaments will be conducted May 7-8, 8-9 or 7-9, with the winner of each preliminary-round tournament advancing to the finals in Altamonte Springs, Florida, hosted by the Central Florida Sports Commission and Rollins College, May 13-16.

The championships consist of a 16-team single elimination tournament. Each of the following eight regions will conduct two preliminary-round tournaments: Atlantic, Central, East, Midwest, South, South Central, Southeast and West. The selection of teams for the championships is based on prescribed criteria listed in the NCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships Handbook and approved by the NCAA Division II Championships Committee.

For information pertaining to teams, dates and site, please see below for the regional brackets.

Fourteen conferences receive automatic qualification into the 2009 men’s championships. Each conference and its automatic qualifier is listed below:

Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association – Shaw
Conference Carolinas – Anderson (South Carolina)
East Coast Conference – Concordia (New York)
Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Northwood (Michigan)
Great Lakes Valley Conference – Rockhurst
Gulf South Conference – Valdosta State
Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association – Washburn
Northeast-10 Conference – Stonehill
Peach Belt Conference – Armstrong Atlantic State
Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference – Metropolitan State
South Atlantic Conference – Mars Hill
Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Morehouse
Sunshine State Conference – Barry
West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – West Virginia Wesleyan

In the final of the 2008 championships, Armstrong Atlantic State University defeated Barry, 5-0.

FULL STORY

–Courtesy NCAA.com

The Pirates clinched the first men’s tennis national championship in school history with a 5-0 victory over No. 5-ranked Barry at the Memorial Park Tennis Center in Houston, Texas, on Saturday afternoon.

The win also gives Armstrong Atlantic State a rare double, winning the men’s and women’s tennis crowns in the same season for the first time since BYU-Hawaii accomplished the feat in 2003.

A pivotal tiebreak point at No. 1 doubles provided the momentum to carry the Armstrong Atlantic State women’s tennis team to their fourth NCAA Division II National Championship with Saturday’s 5-1 victory over Lynn University at the Memorial Park Tennis Center in Houston, Texas.

With two doubles wins already in hand, the third-ranked duo of Iuliia Stupak and Gabriella Kovacs played an hour and 30 minutes at No. 1 doubles against the fourth-ranked duo of Victoria Weltz and Alexandra Schunk. The duo had three match points at 8-7, but Lynn’s duo held serve, forcing a tiebreaker. On the fifth match point, Stupak blasted a cross-court overhand smash for a winner, giving AASU the 8-6 tiebreak win, a 9-7 match win and a commanding 3-0 lead after doubles.

–Courtesy AASU Sports Information