The weather was perfect. The fans were out. The courts were ready, but, unfortunately for the men's tennis team, the Crimson were also out, ready and just plain perfect.
In a dual for the Ivy League championship yesterday afternoon at Topliff tennis courts, tension and intensity could be felt blocks away. The Big Green, recently ranked 50th in the national polls, walked out the underdogs against the 28th-ranked Crimson, but they never let it show.
Harvard started out strong, dominating number-three doubles and taking an early lead in number two doubles, but the Big Green never said die. After exchanging breaks early in the eight-game pro-set, the number one team of Holden Spaht '96 and Jim Rich '96 battled back from a 1-5 tiebreak deficit to win their match 9-8.
With the doubles tied at 1-1, heads turned to second doubles team of Matt Fuller '97 and Captain Kurt Bruggeman '95. The two had battled back from being down 3-6 and two breaks, but in the end came up inches short as they fell 9-7
Inches short seemed to be the theme for the Big Green yesterday. Harvard appeared to be en route to another easy victory when it took the first sets in the first five singles matches. On a day filled with tremendous emotion however, nothing could be taken for granted.
Bruggeman, Spaht and Fuller all battled back to take the second sets, but, most amazingly, Chase Arnold '95 came back from a second set 5-1 deficit to also put his match into three sets. With Rich still in his second set fighting to stay alive, the fate up the Big Green was in the air.
But fate was not meant to be and Rich was the first to fall, 7-6 in the second set. Shortly after, Bruggeman was also defeated. Arnold, who had taken an early lead in the third set was unable to hold on. A bright spot on the day was Spaht's win, but it was followed by a heartbreaking three-set loss by Fuller.
"I think what happened is we got down a little bit but then we made a run at," Coach Chuck Kinyon said. "Harvard is a tough team though and they withstood that."
With the first five matches lasting a while, number six player Avery Rueb '98 was unable to start his match until 6:45 p.m. Midway through the first set, the match was moved indoors to Leverone and where Rueb was finally defeated., giving Harvard the 6-1 victory.
"This team wasn't expected to be doing this well," Kinyon said. "We've had some players really step up though."
Dartmouth won three of four 4-3 matches this season, only falling last weekend at Princeton. The Big Green will finish their regular season play this weekend at Cornell, but they hope that is not the end.
Four teams in the Northeast Region are invited to travel to Princeton the first week of May to compete for a bid in the NCAA tournament. With a win against Cornell, the Big Green hopemake the tournament.
