Stags Tennis Advances to
Regional Final Against Santa Cruz

CMS Men's Tennis earned a 5-0 win over No. 22 Whitman to advance to the third round of the NCAA Team Championships. The Stags will face West Region rival U.C. Santa Cruz, ranked No. 6, who upset No. 4 Cal Lutheran by a 5-2 score on Thursday. CMS and U.C. Santa Cruz will meet for the second time this season at 1 p.m. on Friday (May 14) to determine who will advance to the final eight in Oberlin, Ohio, May 25-27.
On Thursday, CMS took an early 3-0 lead by winning at all three doubles positions. Number-one team Robbie Erani (New York, NY) and Ronald Wu (Los Altos, Calif.) needed only one service break at 5-6, and held on to win 8-6, while CMS' No. 2 and No. 3 pairs were 8-4 winners. In the singles, senior captain Mikey Lim (Honolulu, HI) got the Stags the third point of the afternoon with a strong 6-2, 6-0 performance at No. 2 singles. Three other Stags were a game away from clinching their matches when freshman Mac Cahill (Southport, Conn.) got the fourth point at No. 6 singles, while Alex Johnson (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) got the deciding point at No. 5 singles.
UC Santa Cruz avenged a regular season home loss to Cal Lutheran with their 5-2 win in Claremont on Thursday. The Slugs took No. 1 and No. 3 doubles for a 2-1 lead going into the singles. With straight set wins at No. 1 and No. 2 singles, Santa Cruz built a commanding 4-1 lead. Cal Lutheran got its only singles win at No. 3 singles to narrow the margin to 4-2, before UCSC closed out the match with a 6-1, 6-2 win at No. 5 singles.
The West Regional features four of the top six teams in the West and three of the top six teams in all of Division III. Coming into the regional, CMS and Whitman had not faced each other this season. The Stags are 2-0 against Cal Lutheran and 1-0 against U.C. Santa Cruz on the season, while Whitman is 0-1 against both teams. Cal Lutheran defeated U.C. Santa Cruz in their only previous meeting.