In their last home match of the season on April 13, the Trailblazers men's tennis team pulled off a great 5-4 win over Lindenwood-Belleville.
Just as in the first match with Lindenwood this season, L&C won two out of three doubles setting up a singles showdown, but Lindenwood's top three again proved difficult to beat.
Kyle Stickler at #1 and Joe Hawkes at #2 gave good efforts, but fell in two sets. At #3, Nathan Stachowski came back from a contentious first set tiebreaker loss to dominate the next set 6-0, but couldn't keep the magic going in the third set tiebreaker losing 10-4 - that meant that the Blazers had to win #4, #5, and #6 to win the match.
Cordell Powless steamrolled his opponent at #4. Buddy Hippen won the first set easily and then won a gritty second set tiebreaker to win #5. While Hippen was finishing his match, Kirk Tass was trying to hold on in the second set after losing the first. Playing from behind the entire set, Tass managed to break his opponent three times when he was serving for the match. Tass was getting a lot of first serves in - many of them aces or forcing errors. In the second set tiebreaker and third set tiebreakers it got even better. He also got almost every return back in play and forced his opponent to hit a lot of balls on his serve. With everyone watching and knowing that the match was in the balance, Tass fought off match points to get to a second set tiebreak, got ahead early and won that tiebreak, and then did the same in deciding third set tiebreak winning 10-8.
LCCC 5, Lindenwood-Belleville 4
#1D: Stickler/Stachowski lost to Ludgate/Woo 8-5
#2D: Hawkes/Tass won over Nguyen/Jordan 8-5
#3D: Hippen/Powless won over Downey/Bennett 8-4
#1S: Kyle Stickler lost to Michael Ludgate 6-2, 6-2
#2S: Joe Hawkes lost to Shaun Jordan 6-3, 6-3
#3S: Nathan Stachowski lost to Rodney Atwaters 7-6, 0-6, 1-0 (4)
#4S: Cordell Powless won over Eric Downey 6-2, 6-2
#5S: Buddy Hippen won over David Woo 6-4, 7-6 (4)
#6S: Kirk Tass won over Steven Nguyen 3-6, 7-6 (5), 1-0 (8)