Men's Tennis Escapes Red Storm

Tied in the third set at 5-5 with the match in the balance, junior Aba Omodele-Lucien shrugged off the pressure, winning his match, 7-5, to lift Harvard men’s tennis (7-4) to a 4-3 victory over St. John’s (2-6) on Friday at the Murr Center.

“I don’t think we were prepared for St. John’s to be playing as well as they did,” Omodele-Lucien said. “Last time we played them, it was a little easier. So, we started on our heels, which is always the wrong thing to do. They caught a lot of us off guard.”

The Crimson started the match on a strong note by picking up the doubles point with all three teams defeated their Red Storm opponents.

But the singles matches proved much tougher to win.

“We started off slow in singles,” Omodele-Lucien said. “It was hard to rebound and luckily we could.”

Freshman Josh Tchan was the first to finish at singles. He won in two sets, 6-3, 6-4, at the No. 4 slot.

Tchan’s efficient victory, though, was followed up by two Harvard losses.

At the No. 6 position, sophomore Davis Mangham dropped both sets, 6-4, to his St. John’s opponent.

Christo Schultz finished his match soon after with a three-set loss. Despite a strong second frame, the freshman could not carry his momentum into the third set, and he lost in the No. 5 slot, 1-6, 6-3, 3-6.

“St. John’s coming out as strong as they did in singles because of their results against the other Ivies was surprising,” Crimson coach Dave Fish explained. “To all of a sudden be in a dog fight with them was unexpected for us.”

Whereas Harvard recently beat Brown, Princeton, and Columbia en route to an ECAC Indoor Championship title, the Red Storm lost to Ivy League teams Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton.

Following Schultz’s loss, attention then turned to the first three courts, each featuring close battles.

The crowd watched intently as sophomore Alistair Felton played a drawn-out third set. Down 3-5, Felton made an impressive turnaround and picked up the next game, conceding only one point. But from there the sophomore faltered, ultimately losing, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, in the No. 3 slot.

At the same time on the first court, junior Alexei Chijoff-Evans picked up a three-set victory for Harvard, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2. The win at the No. 1 spot meant the match was tied at three apiece.

With the game riding on his shoulders, Omodele-Lucien didn’t think twice about the pressure.

“You have to tell yourself that you can’t worry about the result,” Omodele-Lucien explained. “If you worry about the result you won’t perform well. The most important thing in a tight situation like that is to play your game well and focus on each shot rather than the score.”

Up 6-5 against St. John’s Milo Hauk, Omodele-Lucien lived up to his words. After dropping the first point, he countered with two solid serves to capture the upper hand at 30-15. An unforced error gave him a bigger lead at 40-15.

Then, a double fault gave the Red Storm a point to make the score 40-30. In the next exchange, Omodele-Lucien’s opponent lobbed a shot into the back corner to knot the score at deuce. Yet, Omodele-Lucien held on and captured the next two points for a 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 victory.

“To see Aba come in with such a big win after losing the first set to a guy whose game style was a nightmare for Aba’s game was great for us,” Fish said.

Fish also made note of the team’s impressive efforts despite the inevitable mid-semester fatigue.

“Our guys were pretty exhausted from exams week, and they were really just running on fumes yesterday [against Radford],” Fish said. “I think they came out and showed a lot of guts and a lot of team spirit when they didn’t have a lot to run on.”