ITA Regional/One Heartbeat

The men's team had a great weekend at the ITA Regional in Arkansas with many wins throughout the weekend. The standouts were Airam Castellano, Mike Psarros, Uldis Gaismins, Andrey Smirnov, Vihn Pham, and Amaury Navette all winning matches over the weekend. We also had some strong showings from Matheus Rohde and Marc Santamaria. Matheus had a nail biter with a 14-12 tiebreaker.

I was impressed with our teams ability to compete at whatever level they were competing against. Uldis played the eight seed from Minnesota and went 7-6, 6-7, 6-3 after beating a good Arkansas player in the first round.

Airam played and destroyed his first two opponents, in the second round he beat a strong Iowa player in straight set easily. His third round he competed well but came up a little short.

Our best shot at going deep in the tourney was our 1 doubles team of Airam and Mike. They had some great opportunities to beat a tough Arkansas team to make the Elite 8, but eventually lost in a tiebreak 7-5.

Over all it was a great weekend with some great match experience! The biggest lesson learned is that our team's greatest strength is going to be in unity, each fighting for the guy beside them. We are striving to make that our one true goal of a team playing with one heartbeat!