The Dartmouth men traveled to New Haven without head coach Chris Drake, whose wife was expecting the couple's second child. Assistant coach Alex Wetherell took on Drake's duties for the tournament.
"The due date was a couple days before the tournament, but the baby didn't come," Cameron Ghorbani '14 said. "They actually had it on the Saturday of the tournament, so he couldn't make it. We went with our assistant coach, and it basically felt the same. Both coaches have the same feel. We've traveled with coach Wetherell one other time without coach [Drake], so it;s not like we've never done it before."
Centenari advanced to the quarterfinals of the tournament before losing to Princeton University senior Matija Pecotic, 6-3, 6-1. En route to the quarters, Centenari defeated opponents from the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and Columbia University. Pecotic defeated Columbia's Winston Lin in the final to win the tournament.
Centenari said he was happy with his play over the weekend, especially given the quality of the competition.
"This is essentially the top players from the Northeast region," Centenari said. "They take the top 96 players, so usually you've got four or five guys from each team who compete. There's a lot of good players. For us, it's the big tournament for the fall."
Centenari cruised against his first two opponents, defeating them in straight sets, before having to stage a comeback against Columbia sophomore Ashok Narayana, who took the first set of the match before Centenari won the next two to prevail, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3.
Sam Todd '15 was the only other Big Green player to win a singles match, defeating Quinnipiac University senior Garrett Lane in the first consolation round 7-5, 6-2. Todd lost his opening match to Nicholas Mahlangu, a freshman from Harvard, by a score of 6-3, 6-7, 6-2.
After defeating Lane, Todd bowed out of the consolation tournament in straight sets to Princeton junior Dan Davies.
Centenari and Ghorbani advanced to the third round of doubles action, defeating teams from Lehigh University and Brown University before losing to Harvard's Andy Nguyen and Nicky Hu, 8-2.
The other Big Green doubles team consisted of Chris Kipouras '15 and Erik Nordahl '16, who defeated a team from the University of Connecticut by a score of 8-4 before seeing its tournament end at the hands of a Columbia duo.
Nordahl, Kipouras and Ghorbani all compiled records of 0-1 in the singles tournament. Ghorbani said he was disappointed with how he managed the pressure of the tournament.
"I didn't really play my game," Ghorbani said. "I was a little too cautious and I didn't trust myself enough. I wanted to win so much that it took me out of how I play. It's tough because it's such a big tournament and a lot of guys put extra pressure on themselves."
After taking the first set easily, 6-1, Kipouras lost a second set, 5-7, and the third, 4-6, to fall to Columbia sophomore Bert Vancura. Nordahl and Ghorbani lost in straight sets to opponents from Princeton and Fordham University, respectively.
"Guys have been working on certain things in their games, and the results don't always necessarily show what we've been working on fixing on the court," Centenari said. "We're thinking more long-term, and the best thing we can do is be honest with our performance and do the best we can to learn where we can go from here."
Okuda led the Dartmouth women, winning three singles matches before she was eliminated in the round of 16 by Harvard's Heidko Tachibana, 6-2, 6-3. Okuda won each of her first three matches in straight sets, including a 6-2, 6-4 upset victory over No. 4 seed Lindsay Graff of Princeton. Suzy Tan '16, Katherine Yau '16 and Janet Liu '15 all won their first matches Tan in the round of 128 and Yau and Liu in the round of 64 before each was eliminated in her second match.
In the doubles tournament, Okuda and Yau reached the quarterfinals, winning three straight matches, including an 8-2 upset of Brown University's Hannah Camhi and Misia Krasowski, who entered the tournament as the No. 8 seed. In the quarterfinals, Princeton's Graff exacted revenge on Okuda for her singles defeat, teaming with Amanda Mulliwan to dispatch the Big Green duo, 8-6. Graff and Mulliwan, who entered as the No. 1 seed, were upset in the semifinals by eventual champions Sol Eskenazi and Sonya Latycheva of the University of Pennsylvania.
The other Big Green doubles team of Liu and Tan fell just short of defeating the second-seeded team of Bianca Sanon and Tiana Takenaga of Columbia, losing 9-8.
The Dartmouth men return to action on Friday as they begin play at the Harvard Halloween Classic in Cambridge, Mass., while the women have Homecoming weekend off before hosting the Big Green Invitational on Nov. 2-4.
