BEAUMONT, Texas — For the first time all season, the Lamar University men’s tennis team dropped a contest to a conference opponent, unfortunately it came in the WAC Championship match. LU lost to the second-seeded Abilene Christian Wildcats, 4-1, Sunday morning at the Beaumont Municipal Tennis Complex.
The Cardinals started the match slow and were never able to recover. ACU grabbed the first lead of the day by winning the doubles point. The two schools split the first two courts, but just four minutes after the duo of Max Amling and Filippo Salsini tied the doubles courts up, ACU responded with a victory on court three for the point and first lead of the match.
Despite the deficit, the Cardinals rallied behind Amling. The rookie bounced ACU’s Tyler Stewart in just over an hour, 6-3, 6-0. While Amling tied the overall match up at 1, LU had its work cut out after dropping three of the remaining first sets. The opening sets on four of the singles courts were evenly matched as three went to a tiebreaker, but two of those went in favor of the Wildcats, with another ending with a 7-5 score.
Unfortunately for the Red and White, the Wildcats held on to each of those courts, and had a second-set lead on the court where they lost an opening-set tiebreak.
The Cardinals end the year with an impressive 17-8 overall record after winning the WAC title in their first year in the league. It is the fourth regular season title under head coach Scott Shankles who was named the 2022 WAC Coach of the Year.