UB Men's Tennis Weekly Release

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Bulls Successful on Two Fronts

The University at Buffalo men’s tennis team took four of its top players to the Farnsworth/Princeton Invitational while the remainder of the squad competed at the Niagara Doubles Shootout. The Bulls reached championship matches at both venues. There was no team scoring at either meet.

Kalinin Makes Finals at Princeton

Alex Kalinin

At the Princeton meet, the Bulls were led by sophomore Alex Kalinin as he reached the championship round of the E singles. In his first competition of the fall, Kalinin opened play with a 6-1, 6-2 win over Binghamton’s Andreas Danielsson and then picked up a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Princeton’s Parker Preyer in the second round. Kalinin advanced to the championship match with his 6-4, 6-3 win over Jeff Karsh of Penn. However, Kalinin’s run was stopped on Sunday as he fell in the championship match to Matt Schimmel of Yale, 6-2, 6-3.

In the A singles, sophomore Wojciech Starakiewicz (Warsaw, Poland/Miguel de Cervantes) also had a strong run. Starakiewicz opened with an easy 6-0, 6-1 win over Ravi Yegya-Raman of Princeton. On Saturday, Starakiewicz went three sets in his two matches. In the early match, he disposed of the number-one seed in the flight, Columbia’s Mihal Nichifor, rallying from a first-set defeat to win 5-7, 6-3, 6-3. Starakiewicz was eliminated by Eugen Brazdil of Penn, again in three sets, 6-3, 3-6, 6-0, late on Saturday.

Rothstein and Custers Capture Doubles Crown

Eric Rothstein

At the Niagara tournament, the UB tandems of Eric Rothstein and Kristof Custers and George Tibil (Bucharest, Romania/Institut des Dames de Marie) and Mitch Zenaty reached their flight championship matches as Rothstein and Custers emerged victorious.

Kristof Custers

In the White Flight competition, Rothstein and Custers went undefeated winning six matches over the two-day tournament. After rolling through four wins on Saturday, Rothstein and Custers shutout David Damiani and Chris Faltenheim of York University, 8-0, to reach the championship match. Rothstein and Custers knocked off another York duo, Dan Weese and Tim Khagem, 8-4, to win the title on Sunday.

Tibil and Zenaty were paired in the Purple Flight, where they went 3-1 on the opening day with wins over opponents from Niagara, St. John Fisher and Allegheny College and falling to York’s Mikhail Lew and Anthony Rakic. On Sunday, Tibil and Zenaty defeated Niagara’s Brandon Gallegos and David Sarrasin, 8-4, in the semifinal round for their fourth win of the weekend. The championship match turned into a rematch against York’s Lew and Rakic. Tibil and Zenaty fell in a tiebreaker against the York pair for the second time in two days to end as the flight runners-up.