A season that began with major question marks for the Hillsdale College men's tennis team has turned into a championship campaign.
The Chargers put the finishing touches on their first G-MAC regular season championship since 2018 on Sunday, beating Walsh 6-1 at home to finish off an undefeated campaign in the conference.
Hillsdale continued its dominance of doubles in G-MAC play, running its record in conference doubles matches to a perfect 15-0 with another clean sweep to earn the doubles point over the Cavaliers. Sophomore Tyler Conrad and freshman Sean Barstow won 6-2 at No. 1 doubles, freshman Brennan Cimpeanu and senior Gabe Katz rolled to a 6-1 win at No. 2 doubles, and junior Brian Hackman and senior Daniel Gilbert pulled out a 6-4 win at No. 3 doubles for the Chargers.
In singles play, the Chargers quickly picked up two points at No. 2 and 4 singles to move one win away from clinching the match. Cimpeanu rolled past Walsh's Joao Campos for a 6-1, 6-1 win at No. 2 singles for the Chargers, and Barstow made similarly quick work of the Cavaliers' Filipp Kulynych for a 6-1, 6-2 with at No. 4 singles as well.
Hackman provided the title-clinching point at No. 3 singles, overcoming a second-set injury to finish of a 6-3, 7-5 win over Walsh's Clemens Wagner and give the Chargers an unassailable 4-0 lead.
Katz, the lone senior in the Charger lineup, went out in style in his final home match, rallying from a 2-6 loss in the first set to win the next two sets 6-4, 6-4 and beat Walsh's Dawson Drummond at No. 6 singles, and Hillsdale's Daniel Gilbert rallied from a 4-1 deficit in a second set tiebreak to sweep Alex Medina Puigmarti of Walsh 6-4, 7-6 (5) as well for the Chargers.
At No. 1 singles, Conrad won the first set 7-5 and gave a good fight to Walsh's Jakob Riglewski, but came up short in the next two sets 3-6, 1-6 for the Cavaliers' only point of the day.
The victory caps a storybook regular season for the Chargers, who entered the year having to replace three of the six spots in their lineup, and also lost senior leader and presumptive No. 1 singles player Ivanhoe Lissanevitch to a season-ending injury.
All six players in Hillsdale's lineup outperformed expectations this season for a 13-2 overall record, especially Conrad, who stepped into the No. 1 singles spot far earlier than expected and posted a winning record against some of the top Division II players in the midwest, and the three freshmen, who became lineup mainstays almost the second they arrived on campus.
As Sunday was the team's final home match, Hillsdale also honored its three seniors -- Katz, who stepped into the lineup and made important contributions to the Chargers' success, as well as Nico de Enrique Schmidt and Lissanevitch, who worked with the team throughout the season to help get the Chargers to the title.
Hillsdale now turns its focus to the G-MAC tournament. Despite a strong record, a constricted regional field means the Chargers will likely need to win the G-MAC tourney and receive the automatic bid to earn Hillsdale's first NCAA Tournament berth since the program restarted in 2015. Hillsdale will travel to Owensboro, Kentucky for the tournament, playing #4 seed Findlay on Friday, April 23 with the winner of Tiffin and Walsh waiting in the final on Saturday, April 24 if the Chargers can get past the Oilers.
