Baldwin Wallace 5, Franciscan 4

Greensburg, Pa. - The Franciscan University Men's Tennis team were defeated by Baldwin Wallace.
    Franciscan Men's Tennis begins their 2021-22' season with a home opener against the Baldwin Wallace Yellow Jackets. Baldwin Wallace had a PAC road-trip this afternoon. Starting with a match against Washington & Jefferson at 11am, then traveling to Steubenville to face the Barons at 4pm.
Doubles
    The Barons got off to a strong start in doubles play with the #1 team of Gary Pierre and Travis Mistry. Pierre/Mistry had an exciting match, but fell short of beating the Yellow Jackets' McGee/Kernan 5-8.
    The Barons #2 pairing of Aidan Howard and Josh Robbins had a close match against Perkins/Reed. The Barons team struggled with their serve in the beginning accumulating a handful of double serve errors, but by the end of the match had honed in their aim and started to take control. Their 8-6 victory was the first Baron point of the afternoon.
    Billy Presume and Leo Morella rounded out the Barons' doubles teams at the #3 pairing. Their match against Tosatto/Hicks went to a tie-break. Unfortunately, Presume/Morella fell to the Yellow Jackets 5-7 in the tie-break. 
    At the end of doubles play, the Yellow Jackets were leading 2-1.

Singles
    Franciscan would continue its momentum from the doubles matchups, with a win in #3 Travis Mistry, #4 Aidan Howard, and #5 Aidan Palladino. Mistry had a shaky second set, but found the shot he had in the first set, and won the third set 6-1. Howard forced a 3rd set from his opponent, and won the set 6-3. #1 Gary Pierre dropped his match to McGee, and #6 Pablo Loyd lost his match to Yellow Jackets' Ziedler. The last match to finish was #2 Billy Presume, going against Kernan. At this time, Franciscan and Baldwin Wallace were tied 4-4, so it all came down to the #2 pairings. Presume had a hard first set, but was able to fight and force the 3rd set tiebreaker. Presume found himself down 5-2 facing match point. The two players fought for 20 minutes trading shots and refusing to give the point. Presume managed to grab the third point, but then dropped the fourth losing the set 6-3. 

Who's Next? 
    The Barons will have a few weeks to prepare for their next matchup, as they will travel to Ohio Northern on September 25th for a 1:00 p.m. contest. The Barons are 2-0 all-time against the Polar Bears, but they have not faced each other since the spring of 2018. 

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