ROME, GEORGIA – UT Tyler tennis capped off their fall slate over the weekend at the ITA Cup as five Patriots players competed for the program at the national tournament and finished a combined 5-4 over nine matches.
Malo Poulesquen (singles),
Yona Bancarel and
Natalia Gorzny (doubles), and
Carel Wessel and
Daniil Felker (doubles) represented the program at the ITA Cup, the new high water mark in the Division II era for most players, and Bancarel and Gorzny became the first women of the Division II era to represent the program at the ITA Cup.
Malo Poulesquen would draw #2 seed Yan Kodjoed in the first round and faced a tough matchup. He would battle close, but Kodjoed proved to be just a little too much in a 6-1, 6-2 victory.
Poulesquen would enter into the back draw, and right the ship immediately as he rattled off a 6-1, 6-3 win over Henry Ronnberg of St. Thomas Aquinas for his first win. That moved him up into another match on Saturday afternoon in the same draw, and he would face off against Pablo Segura of Lubbock Christian. In that match, Poulesquen kept the pedal down, earning a 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 win to wrap up his week at 2-1.
Over in women's doubles, Gorzny and Bancarel would go into a tiebreaker in their first match of the week as they faced off against Liliana Drukerova and Ami Miya of Catawba. The pair took a 6-0 first set, but dropped a 2-6 second set. That set up the tiebreaker, where the Patriots took a 13-11 win to advance in the main draw.
There, the pair faced off with the #3 seeded Candice Bernier and Catherine Rabatin from Saint Leo and put up another tough fight. The Patriots took a marathon first set at 7-6 (10-8), but dropped the second set 6-7 (3-7) to set up the tiebreaker. The pair pressed the match to the brink again, but a 10-8 victory from the pair from Saint Leo allowed them to advance.
The Patriots pair would get one more match, taking on Karli Roux and Brooke Coffman from Harding. The Bisons pair took the first set at 4-6, but the Patriots responded with a 6-3 win to force the tiebreaker, where they took a 10-6 win to earn their second win of the weekend and finish 2-1.
The final competitors for the Patriots for the week were
Daniil Felker and
Carel Wessel, who earned the #3 seed in men's doubles. They faced off with Brendan Jayaprakash and Harry Pugh from Lander in their opening round, but the Lander pair took a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) win to upset the Patriots.
The Patriots then took on Luis Klaus and Harry Forsyth from Wayne State, and got back to work with a 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 straight sets win to pick up their first win. That win set them up to face Omar Elsamahy and Vicente Garcia from Charleston, but a 7-5, 7-5 straight sets win from the Golden Eagles would see the Patriots wrap up the week 1-2.
UT Tyler now looks ahead to the spring schedule as they look to repeat the successes of the 2025 season.
