SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. – The Lake Superior State University (LSSU) men’s tennis program (7-7, 2-4 GLIAC) earned arguably their most impressive win of the season to give the seniors one final win in the Soo, upsetting the No. 39 ranked Grand Valley State (GVSU) Lakers (11-8, 3-3 GLIAC), by a final score of 5-2 on Saturday.
LSSU would set the tone early in doubles play, sweeping all three matches to claim the early 1-0 advantage and grab the momentum. Senior Xavier Vicent Navarro (Cocentaina, Spain) and freshman Lluc Limongi Ollers (Mallorca, Spain) were the first to taste victory with a 6-3 win at the No. 3 spot, and the duo of Jordi Fraile Raton (Sant Cugat del Valles, Spain) and Raul Velasco Garcia (Barcelona, Spain) would follow suit with a 6-4 win in the No. 2 singles match. Senior Aaron Osmond (Cheltenham, U.K.) would then team up with Maxence Hamon (Montreal, Quebec) to finish off the doubles sweep with a 6-4 win of their own in the top doubles position.
It would then be a pair of freshmen that stepped up early on in singles play as Limongi cruised to a 6-3, 6-1 win in the No. 2 singles match while Fraile did not need much more time to push LSSU to a daunting 3-0 edge in the match with a 6-3, 6-4 victory at the No. 4 spot. Grand Valley was able to get on the board by taking the No. 3 singles match despite only narrowly fending off Hamon by two points in a tiebreaker to decide the opening set.
Grand Valley would start to apply pressure to LSSU as they felt their backs against the wall, but Osmond would not allow GVSU to come back on his watch, not on Senior Day, seizing the moment and facing every bit of adversity head on. He took the first set relatively easily by his standards by a score of 6-3, but a 3-0 deficit would prove costly in the second set, dropping it 5-7 despite nearly making the comeback. However, it would be the decisive third set that would truly show what he was made of. Down 5-4 with the match on the line, Osmond stared down three-consecutive match points in favor of his opponent, and he would strike back each and every time to tie up the score before ultimately taking the set 7-5 and clinching the match for his team.
With the match in hand, LSSU still wanted more, and they would get it in the form of a dominant 6-4, 6-1 victory at the No. 6 spot from Velasco. Vicent would drop a tough decision in a super-tiebreaker by a score of 7-5, 6-4, [11-9] in the No. 5 singles match to end the evening, giving Lake State the 5-2 victory and their first since defeating Michigan Tech on March 19.
The Lakers will now turn their attention to the GLIAC Tournament on Friday, April 22 in Midland, Mich.
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