Despite Saturday’s matches being rained out, men’s tennis proved to display quite the performance on Sunday in the Kings Invitational tournament. Initial highlights include sophomore Alex Machalick and senior Michael Cannon winning first place in doubles, as well as first-year Michael Yost and sophomore Nathan Dowling clenching third in the condensed tournament.

“I think the team put together a solid performance. We had some tough singles matches that just didn’t fall our way, but really performed well in doubles and came home with some well deserved victories,” Machalick said.

The rain on Saturday forced the entire tournament to be held on Sunday, which was therefore in a slightly abbreviated format. While there were only three of Sunday’s matches that didn’t have time to be played, none of these involved players from Elizabethtown College.

This tournament was an invitational and was a great start for Etown’s players to get a feel for the season to come.  The schools present were Elmira, Rutgers-Camden, SUNY Oneonta and the host, King’s College (Pa.).

Matchalick and Cannon excelled past the first doubles bracket defeating Elmira’s Keith Bujack and Satchel Waters 8-3. Their next victory was against Stephen Brand and George Parkhurst of King’s 8-5. Yet another win was achieved against Lustin Monteanu and Putira Siv of Rutgers-Camden in which they finished 8-2.

Dowling and Yost also prevailed to win the third spot in doubles when they beat SUNY Oneonta’s James Garzia and Bentley Gonzolez 8-7.

Junior Evan Hinkley and first-year Martin Rodgers clinched their way to the finals by beating Rutgers-Camden’s Joe Tyrell and Jake Collette-Nippins 8-6. However, in the final match, lost 9-4 in the final round.

“Overall I’d say it was a strong tournament for us. The doubles were very aggressive. All of our teams were successful,” he said. “In singles it was a great starting benchmark for us to improve. We know what were good at.”