Oct. 20, 2005
Chapel Hill, N.C. – The South Carolina men’s tennis team had three players advance into the second round at the 2005 Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s Indoor Mideast Regional on the campuses of the University of North Carolina and Duke University. USC’s Jaime Cuellar, Yevgeny Supeko and Geraldo Knorr advanced in singles, while Cuellar and Knorr advanced to the round of 16 with two wins in the main draw of doubles.
Carolina had two players who earned seeds at the tournament, with the 83rd-ranked Cuellar being awarded the No. 9 seed, while sophomore transfer Supeko (Texas A&M) is the tournament’s 25th seed. With Cuellar and Supeko drawing first round byes as a result of their seeds, only seniors Geraldo Knorr and Adam Adler were competing on day one of the singles bracket.
Knorr went down a break against East Tennessee State’s Enrique Olivares and fell 6-4 in the first set of his match, but easily took the second set 6-2 to send the match to a decisive third set. In that set, Knorr and Olivares battled it out until the very end, with Knorr taking the set and match with a 7-5 win. Adler was not as fortunate as Knorr and fell in straight sets to Ryan Young of archrival Clemson, 6-2, 6-0. He has a bye in the first round of tomorrow’s consolation bracket. Adler will face Priit Pihl of Liberty in the second round on Friday.
In doubles action, Cuellar and Knorr improved their 2005 record to 5-0 with a pair of 8-4 victories over Elon’s Austin Fenn and Damon Gooch in the first round and ninth-seeded Scott Blackmon and Zachary Rath of Georgia Tech in the second round.
Cuellar will face Marius Adamski of Wake Forest on Friday at 12 p.m., and Supeko will take on Maryland’s Andy Orban at 8:30 a.m., both in Chapel Hill, while Knorr will look across the net at 17th-seeded David North of Georgia Tech at 11 a.m. in Durham. The doubles tandem of Knorr and Cuellar will take on second-seeded Joey Atas and Jonathan Stokke of Duke on Friday afternoon in Chapel Hill.
The ITA’s regional competitions across the country serve as qualifiers for the second national championship of the year, the ITA National Collegiate Indoor Championships, being hosted by The Ohio State University at the Columbus Racquet Club in Columbus, Ohio. Each of the sixteen regional finalists (from the eight regions) advances automatically to the championships, held Nov. 4-6, and the ITA will take at-large entries from the tournaments’ quarterfinalists.
