BERLIN – Once the clouds parted last Saturday morning, the Ocean City Tennis on Campus Invitational served up some of the best tennis seen at the Ocean City Tennis Center.
The annual Ocean City Tennis on Campus Invitational hosted five college teams, each playing four dual matches on Saturday to beat Sunday’s forecast for rain. With the tight competition the winner wasn’t crowned until the final match with University of Maryland downing University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) with a final score of 26-17.
The final match saw UMBC take an early lead with Kaitlyn Heo and Serene Mathew dominating the women’s double 6-1. University of Maryland came back strong taking three of the next four matches with the men’s doubles secured by Quentin Boustany and Michael Liu with a 6-1 win and women’s singles player Sarah Bernstein taking the 6-0 match.
There were several individual performances of note during the day led by University of Maryland’s Sofie Epstein five wins and Nicole Szeluga and Sarah Bernstein with four wins each. Kaitlyn Heo and Serene Mathew of UMBC had eight and seven wins respectfully for UMBC on the women’s side. The men saw Michael Liu of University of Maryland and Sam Keefer of UMBC lead the way with four wins each.
In the end, University of Maryland finished with an unblemished 4-0 record. UMBC was a close second at 3-1, while last year’s winner, University of Delaware, was third at 2-2. Towson University rounded out the competition 1-3 with Salisbury University at 0-4.