Tennis Champions

GAMBIER, Ohio (April 26, 2004) Late Sunday night, the Kenyon College Lords tennis team defeated the College of Wooster in the North Coast Athletic Conference championship final. The win gave the Lords their third straight conference title, a 15-3 season record, and another berth in the NCAA Division III championship tournament.

The Lords, now owners of eight conference titles in the last sixteen years, will have to wait one more day before learning of their opponent in the first round of the upcoming NCAA tournament. Last season, the Lords defeated Kalamazoo College in the first round of the national tournament before falling to Washington University in the second round.

The Lords earned the berth in this season's NCAA tournament by winning three straight matches in conference play. They first defeated Wabash College, 4-0, on Saturday morning. On Sunday, the Lords finished off host Oberlin College 4-2 in the semifinals and then defeated Wooster by the same score in the finals. Sunday's matches ran late because they had to be moved indoors due to inclement weather.

Throughout the conference championship matches, Kenyon junior Mike Herrick (Amherst, OH/Elyria Catholic) went undefeated. He won all three of his singles matches in the No. 2 spot and also won all three of his No. 2 doubles matches with Brian Taubman (Shaker Heights, OH/Shaker Heights). Herrick was so dominant that he did not drop a set. In fact, he did not allow an opponent to win more than two games in any set. He is now 11-1 this season in No. 2 singles matches.

Taubman also had a good weekend, winning the three doubles matches with Herrick and winning twice at No. 3 singles. He did not finish his match against his Wabash opponent, but went on to defeat Oberlin's Nick Ogren in the semifinals and Wooster's Nikhil Gonsalves in the finals.

Borko Tesic (Amherst, OH/Elyria Catholic) played at No. 1 singles for the Lords and went 0-2, but in the No. 3 doubles spot he and teammate Jon Greenberg (Chapel Hill, NC/East Chapel Hill) were a perfect 3-0. Greenberg was also 2-0 in No. 5 singles matches, including winning the championship-clinching match 6-3, 6-3 against Wooster's Brian Ebbitts.

One of the nation's leading liberal arts and sciences colleges and home to the Kenyon Review, Kenyon College offers 1,594 students a challenging educational experience enriched by a culture of friendship. Graduates of the College have included actor and philanthropist Paul Newman and author E. L. Doctorow.