The Stevens Men’s Tennis team competed in the first two days of the ITA Southeast Regional Championship on October 1 and 2 at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Stevens opened the tournament Thursday with Samvid Andhare, Christopher Cho, Renat Kramin, and Jamie Ortiz competing in Championship singles. Cho faced Salisbury’s Gurv Suri and recovered from a 3-6 opening set to take the second 6-4. The match went to a deciding 10-point tiebreak, where Suri won 10-6.
The remaining opening-day singles matches ended in straight-set losses for Stevens. Andhare fell 5-7, 2-6 to Swarthmore’s Fate MacAlasdair, while Ortiz lost 2-6, 4-6 to Mary Washington’s Evan Fisher. Kramin faced Carnegie Mellon’s Jayden Yu and fell 3-6, 2-6.
First-year Pratik Nayak won both of his B2 singles matches Friday, taking the first 6-3, 7-6 and the second 6-2, 6-2 to secure a semifinal spot. Elias Alkio also earned a B3 singles victory, winning a deciding tiebreak 10-3 after splitting the first two sets. He then fell 5-7, 3-6 in the quarterfinals. Kramin added an 8-2 consolation win, while Tristan Wroe lost his B2 singles match.
Nayak, a Quantitative Finance major from Nanuet, New York, is one of three first-year players on the Stevens roster, alongside Cho and Ortiz.
Nayak said a disputed line call during the second-set tiebreak of his opening match became a source of motivation. He recalled believing that a serve called out landed in, and channeled that frustration to win the match.
“I really wanted to prove that I didn’t need that point to win that match,” Nayak said.
Nayak credited his singles success to serving and volleying, a tactic he had practiced but had not used much in matches. Playing aggressively at the net helped him shorten points and conserve energy, while varying his pace gave his opponents tough shots to handle. He described the adjustment as “playing smarter tennis, not necessarily hitting harder.”
In Championship doubles, Kramin and Wroe opened with an 8-4 win before losing 3-8 in the Round of 32. Nayak and Cho also reached that round, following an 8-3 victory with a 5-8 loss. Alkio and Johnny Haase fell 4-8 in B1 doubles, and Ortiz and Andhare lost their Championship doubles match.
Nayak said his partnership with Cho benefited from a connection that began before Stevens. The two played high school tennis together for four years and already understood each other’s games. That familiarity strengthened their synergy and helped them handle important points.
Although Nayak did not play his semifinal match, he said the two singles victories gave him confidence after weeks of preparation. Looking toward the spring, he hopes to build his fitness and endurance to meet the demands of longer college matches.
Stevens will close its fall schedule on October 17 with a pair of MAC Freedom matches against King’s College and Misericordia University at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in Bayonne.
