HARROGATE, Tenn. -- Carson-Newman men's tennis traveled to Harrogate, Tenn. to take on the Lincoln Memorial Railsplitters for their first conference match of the season. After tieing the score at two apiece, the Eagles were unable to grab the win and fell 5-2.
Beginning the day with doubles, none of the duos could get more than four games off of the 'Splitters. Marc Bantel (Urbach, Germany) and Joey Stiles (New Oxford, Penn.) were the first ones to finish falling to Iker Moure and Moritz Hoerner 6-1 at No. 3. The No. 1 pair of Jesus Bacete-Sanz (Madrid, Spain) and Gabriel Dabdab (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) fell shortly after to Fabian Sjokvist and Sebastian Colla 6-3. The freshman duo of Hernan Toledo (Santiago, Chile) and Rintaro Oka (Nariba, Japan) were able to win the most games in their match but still fell short against David Segarra and Jake Tuchman 6-4.
Moving into singles play, the Eagles took four of the six matches into three sets in their efforts to come back after dropping the doubles point. The No. 1 singles match ended first but Dabdab put up a fight against Segarra. The junior fell in the first set 6-4 but came back to win the second handily 6-1. Unable to close out the match and grab the win, he ended up falling 6-0 in the third.
Down 2-0, the Eagles desperately needed a spark to get some momentum, and Toledo and Bacete provided it and tied the match 2-2. At the No. 3 singles position he took Hoerner to three sets just like Dabdab, but finished on top. Falling in the first set 6-3, Toledo worked his way back into the match and won the second 6-2. Hoerner looked as if he would make a comeback in the third set but Toledo was able to hold him off and won the third set 6-4. Bacete played the max amount of games possible just about in his match as he prevailed in the first set against Sjokvist 7-5. He narrowly fell in the second taking it to a tiebreaker and lost 7-6 (7-5) but came back in the third winning 7-5.
With life in their veins the three Eagles that had finished looked to their teammates to bring the match to a close in their favor, unfortunately, the cards didn't fall their way.
Oka played at the No. 2 seed and was defeated by Iker Moure in one of the two set matches of the day 6-4, 6-2 bringing the overall score to 3-2 in LMU's favor. Bantel battled in his contest against Colla at No. 4 but despite taking it to three sets, he fell 6-3, 2-6, 6-0. Victor Ireno (Sau Paulo, Brazil) finished out the day for the Eagles at No. 6 singles falling to Tuchmann 6-1, 6-2.
The Eagles will be back in action against Queens on Saturday on their home courts with play set to begin at 2:30 p.m. For more information, updates and results check back on cneagles.com.
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