No. 6 Emory Tops No. 9 Tartans at ITA Indoor Championship

(ST. PETER, Minn.) - The ninth-ranked Carnegie Mellon University men's tennis team faced sixth-ranked Emory University in the first round of the ITA National Team Indoor Championship at Gustavus Adolphus College on Friday, February 20. The Eagles outlasted the Tartans 5-4.

Carnegie Mellon earned its first point of the match when the No. 2 doubles team of sophomores Jack Kasbeer (Lake Forest, Ill./Deerfield) and Kenny Zheng (Pennington, N.J./Hopewell Valley Central) came-from-behind to defeat Eric Halpern and Scott Rubinstein, 8-6. Kasbeer and Zheng won the final three points of the match, breaking the Eagles' serve twice.

In singles play, senior Christian Heaney-Secord (Westwood, Mass./Westwood) won a three-set thriller against Halpern 6-2, 6-7, 6-4 to make the score 4-2 with the Eagles still in the lead.

Zheng lost a tight two-set match that went to two tiebreakers at No. 3 singles, which gave Emory the deciding match point.

Sophomore Kunal Wadwani (Saratoga, Calif./ Ballarmine College Prep) won his No. 4 singles match, 6-3, 6-2, against Ian Wagner to score the third point of the match for the Tartans.

The final point of the match was won by Kasbeer at No. 5 singles as he defeated Rubinstein, 7-5, 3-6, 10-7.

The Tartans will now face 12th-ranked Kenyon College, who fell to fifth-ranked Washington University 5-4, on Saturday, February 21 at 8:30 a.m. CT.