Four Individuals Advance to Semifinal Competition at USTA/ITA Southeast Regional
(FREDERICKSBURG, Va.) – Four Carnegie Mellon University men's tennis players will compete in the semifinals at the USTA/ITA Southeast Regional on Monday, October 3 after the first four rounds of competition on Saturday and Sunday on the campus of the University of Mary Washington. Two doubles teams advanced while freshman Michael Rozenvasser (Haworth, N.J./Northern Valley Regional) will have his hand in the singles semifinals as well.
The sophomore pair of Vayum Arora (Fremont, Calif./Mission San Jose) and Daniel Levine (Highland Park, Ill./Boca Prep International School) finished their freshmen campaign as All-Americans with a national ranking of 10. As the number one seed for the regional, they breezed through competition in the first four rounds, winning by 8-4, 8-2 and 8-1 scores after receiving a bye in the round of 64. They started the weekend with the 8-4 win against Caius Blomqvist and Lauri Soome of Averett University before topping Max Oberholtzer and Paul Vecchio of Ursinus College, 8-2. In the quarterfinals, Arora and Levine defeated nine-seed David Perez and Scott Thygesen of Johns Hopkins University, 8-1. The pair will face Swarthmore's Mark Fallati and Joshua Powell, seeded fourth, on Monday in the semifinals.
The Tartans also had the pair of senior Kenny Zheng (Pennington, N.J./Hopewell Valley Central) and Rozenvasser advance to the semifinals in doubles. Seeded fifth, Zheng and Rozenvasser also received a first round bye before winning 8-4 against Joseph Brown and Patrick Hughes of Mary Washington. The duo continued to win with an 8-5 victory against teammates Nicholas Calzolano (Hinsdale, Ill./Hinsdale Central) and Mary Prettyman (Fairfax, Va./Thomas Jefferson) and an 8-6 win against Austin Gu and Justin Kang of Johns Hopkins. Zheng and Rozenvasser will play Michael Buxbaum and Emerson Walsh of Johns Hopkins in the semifinals on Monday.
In singles play, Rozenvasser started with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Kevin Yan of Haverford College in the round of 64. He followed that with an identical win against Hughes and then came-from-behind to defeat Aaron Carey of John Hopkins, 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 to advance to the quarterfinals where he faced Brandon Griffin of Mary Washington. Seeded fifth, Rozenvasser topped Griffin, seeded fourth, 6-4, 6-4. He will now play Buxbaum, a former regional singles champion, in the semifinals.
Levine also advanced to the quarterfinals in the singles bracket before falling in three sets, 7-6(8-6), 3-6, 6-3, to a tough player in Courtney Murphy of Wilkes University. In previous rounds, Levine won 6-0, 6-1 against Catholic's Juan Pablo Lorido, 6-1, 6-4, against Joshua Moskovitz of Haverford and 6-3, 6-1 against Michael Fleming of Mary Washington.