The Troy Trojan tennis team began play in the ITA All-American Championships on Saturday, Sept. 27. Four men from Troy’s team competed, and one woman competed and finished on Sunday, Sept. 28.
The men’s and women’s tournaments were held in different places. The men’s tournament was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the women’s tournament was held in Pacific Palisades, California.
Sophomore Pablo Moreno, junior Giovani Samaha, and junior Gabriel Sciacca Dias also competed in the men’s draw, and all dropped their first-round matches.
Moreno dropped his match to freshman Justin Roberts from the University of South Florida. Samaha dropped his match to junior Julian Bradley from the University of North Florida, and Dias lost his match to freshman Mikael Torpegaard from Ohio State University.
Troy University junior Trang Huynh lost her pre-qualifying first-round match to freshman Borislava Botusharova from Old Dominion University.
Junior Daniel Bustamante was the only Trojan out of the men and women to advance past his pre-qualifying first-round match. He also advanced past his second and third-round matches.
In Bustamante’s first round, he beat junior Jacob Rother from UTSA in a score of 6-4, 6-3. He then went on to defeat sophomore Dave Bacalla from Valparaiso University with a score of 6-3, 6-2. On Sunday, Sept. 29, Bustamante played Wake Forest’s junior Anthony Delcore and beat him 2-6, 6-4, and 6-4.
However, he lost his fourth-round match by a score of 6-4, 6-1 to freshman Robert Kelly from the University of North Carolina.
Bustamante was only one win away from making it to the qualifying draw that started on Monday, Sept. 30.
Even though none of the Trojans made it to the qualifying draw or the main draw, Samaha and Moreno each won straight sets. The men’s next tournament will start on Friday, Oct. 3, and the women will compete again on Friday, Oct. 10.
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