Freshmen Excel At UNCW Landfall

Sept. 15, 2009

WILMINGTON, N.C. - The East Carolina men's tennis team officially opened the fall portion of its schedule with the UNC Wilmington Landfall Invitational this past weekend. The Pirates notched six singles victories and three doubles triumphs, highlighted by an appearance in the Flight B doubles semifinals by freshmen Pablo Nunez Palmieri and Nathaniel Smiley.

Nunes picked up three wins (two doubles) to pace ECU, including reaching the consolation final of the B singles flight. He dropped his first match 6-1 and 6-1 to Amogh Prabhakar of Wake Forest before rebounding to top Zachary Pine from Virginia Tech in straight sets (6-4, 6-2). Nunes then joined with Smiley to dispatch Trenton Spinks and William Adeimy of Georgia State (8-3) and Ryan Ybarra and Max Ando Hirsch of the host Seahawks (8-1). Their run would end there however, as Alex Funkhouser and Dorian Sovic, representing Coastal Carolina, took the semifinal by an 8-5 scoreline.

Three other freshmen also tallied their first collegiate wins in the event. After losing to Illia Ziamtsou from UNCW and Hokie player Jonathan Pine, John Schmitt responded with a 6-4, 3-6, 10-5 triumph over Zachary Pine. Massimo Mannino dropped a first round tilt to Henri Mangin from Georgia State (6-4, 6-2) before taking out Wake Forest's Chad Brady, 6-3 and 6-3. Additionally, Ely Khoury bounced back from a 6-0, 6-2 loss to Matt Gordon from Coastal Carolina and a consolation round defeat to Anton Nikolov of the Seahawks (7-6 (1), 6-2) to record a shortened 8-6 victory over Adeimy.

The Pirates will take a few weeks off before jumping back into competition at the Old Dominion Fall Tournament. The event is scheduled for Oct. 2-4 at the ODU Tennis Center in Norfolk, Va.

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