After a weekend of competition at the Princeton Farnsworth Invitational and the Mary Washington Tournament, the Hoya tennis programs returned to the Hilltop to host the Georgetown Classic, an individual tournament played on the tennis courts outside McDonough. This tournament consisted of both men’s and women’s competitions and invited schools from the D.C. area, including George Washington University and University of Maryland, Baltimore College.
After settling into competition last week, both teams experienced success in the home tournament. On the men’s side, Georgetown had three of the four remaining competitors in the semifinals of both the singles and doubles tournaments.
After a loss in the first round of the main draw, sophomore Alex Tropiano rebounded to win the consolation bracket without losing a game. Tropiano also reached the final of the doubles tournament with sophomore Daniel Khanin, who reached the semifinals of the singles draw before losing to teammate, sophomore Shane Korber.
“I think we had a lot of guys step up,” said senior captain Charlie Caris of his team’s success. “One of our guys, Danny Khanin, was down 5-0 in the third and he won seven straight games to win. I think all across the board we had good performances.”
The weekend was especially big for Caris, who was in top form as he won both the singles tournament, beating Korber in the final, and the doubles tournament with junior partner Casey Distaso. “I would attribute it to the last month of practice,” Caris said of his performance in the tournament. “Everybody has been showing up to practice on time. We’ve been doing the runs, we’ve been doing the lifts, and I guess I just felt that I had the team behind me and that I had something to fight for more so than I had in the past. I felt a little bit more pride. I really wanted to represent Georgetown.”
On the women’s side, sophomore Sophie Panarese reached the final of the singles draw before falling to Leah Pascarella from George Washington 7-6, 6-1. The team of junior Kelly Comolli and Liz Hamlin reached the final of the doubles tournament before falling to Mimi Hamling and Lana Robins from George Washington.
“We overall had a good weekend, unfortunately I wasn’t able to play because I’ve been struggling with an injury, but others did extremely well,” said senior captain Vicky Sekely of the weekend’s performance. “We had girls in the singles final, the doubles final, and the back draw, so we overall had a great weekend. We have a lot of off-time before ITA’s so we’re just focusing on making practice like a match so we can get the competition going.”
Next weekend, the men will head to the Margaux Powers Tournament in Providence, R.I., while the women will have the weekend off. Both teams will go to Intercollegiate Tennis Association Regionals from Oct. 18-23, the women at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and the men at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, before a three month break from competition. After ITA Regionals, the Hoya tennis program looks to move their individual success into the team season, which begins in February.
“My main objective for the next week is just to maintain the same level of tennis and have the same level of intensity,” Caris said. “I would extend that as a team goal as well. I think everyone put on a good show, we had three of the four semifinalists in the singles and the doubles so I would just say if we can continue the success from this weekend, I think we’ll be in good shape.”
