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Dear Sweet Slug Fans,

Those of you that made it witnessed a wonderful college match as the Slugs defeated the Stags of Claremont by a score of 5-1 in the NCAA regional final. This win advances the top ranked Slugs to the final site in St Louis next week where they will take a run at the title against the other seven regional winners.

The draw will be forwarded to you in a later email but I wanted to extend my sincere thanks to all the Slug alumni, family, friends and fans that make this match have the feel of a championship final! I think this was the first time ever that the top two ranked teams in the country had to meet in a regional final and it was the third meeting of the year for these two teams.

It was a total team effort from start to finish and we needed every bit of our strength and character to defeat this wonderful opponent. At one doubles Matt Seeberger and Max Ortiz got the Slugs on the board first with a 8-6 win over the only team that had beaten them in a dual match. We lost a close 8-6 match at two doubles as Brian Pybas and Max Liberty-Point lost their first dual match. At three doubles Jared Kamel and Marc Vartabedian were up an early break but fell behind and faced one match point with Claremont serving for the match. Some great tennis brought us to a tiebreaker where we won 7-4 to put us up 2-1 in the match.

Brian Pybas got us on the board early with a 6-2, 6-4 win at three singles closely followed by Max Ortiz who won 6-1,6-2 at five singles to put us up 4-1 and on the verge of victory. Both Brian and Max defeated very good opponents and showed the continued growth that has characterized this team. Jared Kamel won a first set tiebreaker that had the crowd roaring as it went on and on until Jared finally prevailed 19-17 in the longest college tiebreaker I can remember. Jeff Fong was down a set but battling back in the second while Matt Seeberger came back from losing the the first to force a third set against the talented Larry Wang. With the match still in the balance soph Colin Mark-Griffin clinched with a 6-2, 7-6 (7-5) win at six singles to put the match on ice.

I am so proud of this valiant effort from the entire team as we were applying pressure at every match.

We will play host school Washington Unversity in the first round of the final 8 NCAA Team Championship on Tuesday May 15th at 1:00 mid west time or 11:00 west coast time. Live stats are available on the championship web site at: http://bearsports.wustl.edu/

Thanks again for all your support,

Coach Hansen, Parmelly, Farb and the Slugs