The rainy weather made for undesirable conditions for the men's tennis team in the opening day of the UB Invitational. However, Buffalo still found a way to shine throughout the weekend.
The Bulls hosted St. Bonaventure, Kennesaw State, and Niagara for their only home meet of the fall season. Buffalo flourished against the visiting competition, and ended the three-day event with five championships.
Junior Vusa Hove was outstanding throughout the weekend, and went undefeated in both singles and doubles matches. His performance earned him a championship in the C singles draw and the A doubles draw.
Hove didn't drop any sets in his singles matches. He took his first match against Kennesaw State's Tyler Mills, 7-6, 6-4, and went on to defeat Niagara's Joe Zelic 6-1, 6-1. He capped off his weekend with a 6-3, 6-4 win over St. Bonaventure Oscar Yanez.
The junior explained the importance of the team's intensity.
"You can't treat any match like it's small, you have to keep playing at [a high] level," Hove said. "The energy is real good on the team and personally I feel really confident. That helped me play well."
Freshman Damien David also went unbeaten last weekend. David defeated Kennesaw State's Louis Theodor, 6-2, 6-2, Niagara's Brandon Gallegos, 6-3, 6-1, and St. Bonaventure's Luis Guevara, 6-1, 6-1, to win the B Singles Draw Championship.
David also joined forces with Hove to dominate the A doubles draw. After beating Kennesaw State, 8-4, Hove and David dominated Niagara and St. Bonaventure and held the two doubles teams to just one point.
Senior Wojceich Starakiewicz made up for his one loss in doubles with the weekend's most dominating performance in singles. Starakiewicz started strong with a 6-3, 6-3 rout of Kennesaw State's Simon Janik. He then dismantled Niagara's Matt Kane, 6-1, 6-1, and St. Bonaventure's Elliot Fanshel, 6-0, 6-2.
Head coach Lee Nickell was impressed with Starakiewicz's performance.
"He really showed us something this weekend in terms of how dominant he was," Nickell said. "In terms of being prepared going into the [ITA Regionals] in a couple of weeks, I think this was the exact tournament he needed and he really stepped up and did a great job."
Sophomore Travis Zappia came away with a championship in the G singles draw. Zappia defeated Niagara's Matt Bojanowski and St. Bonaventure' Mihai Ene with ease. He took both of the sets 6-0, 6-1.
Nickell is proud of his team's accomplishments so far, and considered this to be the strongest start to a season in his three years of coaching at Buffalo.
"The guys stepped up this weekend and dominated teams that they should've," Nickell said. "We're at the point where we're expecting to go in and dominate our opponents. That's what we've been working for these past few years."
Not everything went as planned during the weekend. Rain forced the Bulls to delay their play and move their match against Kennesaw State to the indoor Miller Tennis Center on Friday. Buffalo won most of the matches, but ended up playing the Owls until 1 a.m. The Bulls experienced slight fatigue when they faced off against Niagara back at the Ellicott Tennis Center at noon on Saturday.
Buffalo showed its resilience that afternoon, and took five of the eight singles matches and split the four doubles matches with the Purple Eagles.
Nickell admitted that it wasn't his team's best performance, but he praised his team's endurance.
"It wasn't our best tennis by any means," Nickell said. "But we fought through the bad things that we were doing and we found a way to win. That's what good teams do."
Buffalo bookended the weekend by winning all 10 of its matches against St. Bonaventure on Sunday.
Sophomore Jason Shkodnik, who was sidelined with a groin injury on Saturday, provided one of the weekend's more thrilling moments in his match against St. Bonaventure's Trevor Haskell. Shkodnik took the first set 6-0 before Haskell responded with a shutout of his own the next set. Shkodnik pulled through in the end at took the final set 11-9 in a tiebreak.
The Bulls will have two weeks to prepare for the ITA Regional Championships. The tournament is scheduled for Oct. 13-18.
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