The Jeffs came into the tournament hoping to advance their national ranking and assure a qualification for nationals. The team was ranked 20th in the nation coming into the conference championship, just two spots behind Bates College and five spots behind Bowdoin. Given their recent results against the two Maine schools, Amherst hoped to finish as high as third in the tournament.
If the team was going to reach its potential, however, they had to receive solid performances from their doubles teams, a weak spot for the squad during the entire year. Unfortunately, the first day of the tournament made that weakness exceedingly clear.
Against the upper-echelon NESCAC teams that Amherst played earlier in the year, namely Middlebury, Bowdoin, Trinity and Williams Colleges the Jeffs never won the doubles point and only won two of the 12 doubles matches played. Juniors Josh Rilla and Danny Babkes, who teamed up last year to win the NESCAC doubles title, instead fell in the first round to the Middlebury team, 8-6. They did, however, go on to win the consolation bracket. Lenny Lepner '07 and first-year Geoff Schwarz got off to a good start, winning their first-round doubles match 8-1, but lost in the second round to the Williams squad. Neither of the doubles combos of rookie Michael Mintz and Jon Godsall '07 or Scott Bronner '06 and Karti Subramanian '07 were able to win their matches on Friday. The Jeffs were only able to secure five points in four different doubles flights.
On the other hand, five of
Amherst's six singles players advanced to the semifinals of their singles flights on Saturday. Rilla and Babkes, playing in the number-one and number-two singles flights, respectively, both won hard fought three-set matches in order to advance.
Rilla fell in a first set tie-breaker to Trinity's Brett Ramsay but managed to find his stroke and won the next two sets with relative ease. Babkes, on the other hand, had a tough match all the way through. He won the first set over opponent Paul Roberts of Tufts University 7-5, but lost the second set 7-6 in a tie-breaker. Babkes managed to get up by a break in the third set and was able to hold on to win by that margin, 6-4.
Mintz and fellow first-year Jeff Wan both won their matches in straight sets, playing in the fourth and sixth singles flights. Senior captain Max Rettig also won his first-round match in the fifth singles position, winning 6-3, 6-2. The only singles player to fall on Friday was Lepner. The sophomore won the first set 6-1 over Jumbo William Fleder but quickly faded, losing the second set 6-2 and the third set 7-6 (7-4) in a heart-wrenching tie-breaker.
While the opening-day trouble for the Jeffs came in the doubles matches, Saturday's singles matches brought mixed results. Of the five players who advanced to the semifinals, only Rettig and Mintz were able to advance to the finals, both winning in straight sets.
It was all downhill from there for the Jeffs. Rilla lost in straight sets to eventual singles champion McAfee Burke of Bowdoin in the top singles bracket, while Babkes lost an exceedingly close 6-7, 7-6, 6-4 match to Jeffrey Kivitz of Williams in the second singles flight. Wan dropped his number-six singles semifinal to eventual winner Salih Unsal of Middlebury. On the final day of the tournament, both remaining Jeffs, Mintz and Rettig, dropped their finals to Panthers, with Mintz coming the closest to victory with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 loss.
Although the Jeffs didn't end up exactly where they had hoped, they still have a shot at qualifying for NCAA Regionals, which will be held May 7-8. The team hopes for a chance at redemption. "[If we make it] our chances of winning Regionals is strong to quite strong," said Babkes.