ORLANDO, Fla. — The Ave Maria Men's Tennis team dropped their second game at the UTSA campus in Orlando, falling 4-3 to the Judson Eagles. The match was originally scheduled for Tuesday, March 3, but due to rain in the Central Florida area, had to be made up Wednesday morning.

In the opening doubles round, Judson swept all three sets to win the first point of the match. Two of the three pairs, Andreu Soliva/Danil Mishchanin and Julien Mourad/Joao Felipe Almedia, needed a tiebreaker to decide the set. However, they both lost 7-5 in the extra game.

In the singles round, Ave Maria got three wins from Gianmarco Punzo, Pedro Garcia and Soliva.

In the second pairing, Punzo won the first game 6-2 but dropped the second game 6-4. In the deciding 10-point match tiebreaker set, Punzo won a close battle 10-7 to put Ave Maria on the board.
Garcia's win was a little easier, sweeping his Judson counterpart in two sets 6-1, 7-6.

Soliva's win was also a two-set sweep, winning the fifth pairing 6-3, 6-4.

Three singles win unfortunately wasn't enough since Judson took the doubles point and won 4-3. In the three singles losses for the Gyrenes, two matches went to a 10-point tiebreaker set. Almeida lost his tiebreaker 10-2, and Mishchanin came out on the losing end of an exciting 13-11 set.

With the loss, Ave Maria falls to 0-3 on the year.

After making up their Tuesday match, the Gyrenes turn their focus to their originally scheduled Wednesday opponent in Rensselaer Polytechnic. The Engineers are the No. 20 team in NCAA Division III. It will be the first ever meeting on the tennis court between the Gyrenes and Engineers.