New Haven, CT — The first matches of the 2013 Men’s National Team Championships got underway at 11:30 am this morning.
A Division (Potter Cup): The top two seeds in the entire tournament — Trinity and Princeton — both advanced to the semifinals. Trinity defeated St. Lawrence, and Princeton defeated Franklin & Marshall. Both the Saints and the Diplomats made their higher seeded opponents work for the wins. Potter Cup newcomers St. Lawrence kept every game interesting, pushing multiple games into extra points. The final score was 8-1 to Trinity, with Amr Khalifa posting the lone win for the Saints at number 1. The Princeton-F&M match-up saw several competitive matches. While the top three matches finished up first, the action on courts 2 and 3 filled the entire three hours allotted to the match. Princeton ultimately moved on with an 8-1 victory.
B Division (Hoehn Cup): The first flight of Penn-Western Ontario matches could not have been closer. All three matches — numbers 3, 6, and 9 — all went to five games. The Mustangs ended up sweeping the flight, and what looked like it would be an extremely tight match quickly shifted in Western’s favor. The Mustangs sewed up the win by the end of the second flight and went on to advance to the semifinals with an 8-1 win. The 1 in the final score was Danny Greenberg’s five-game victory at number 1. Western will face Dartmouth in the semifinals. The top-seeded Big Green dominated Brown in the first round, taking every match but one by a score of 3-0. Bears’ senior Chris Holter not only took Dartmouth’s Michael Mistras to four games, he won the closest match of the contest in four: 11-13, 11-6, 11-7, 11-9. Brown will play Penn in the consolation semifinals.
C Division (Summers Cup): Most of the C Division action is taking place at Wesleyan University. The first matches began at noon, and scores had not been reported at the time of publication.
D Division (Conroy Cup): The first D Division matches were scheduled to begin at 1:30 pm at Choate.
E Division: (Chaffee Cup): Most of the E Division matches will be played later today at Choate and Yale.
F Division (Serues Cup): The first F Division matches were scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm at Hopkins.
G Division (Hawthorn Cup): The first G Division match is scheduled to begin at 5:00 pm at Hopkins.
