Kipouras and Sakinis Fall to Harvard in Finals at ITAs

Tuesday, October 21

Flushing, N.Y.

All Day

Dartmouth College

Day Six

Sakinis Wins First Round of Singles at ITA All-America Champs

Kipouras and Sakinis Fall to Harvard in Finals at ITAs

10/21/2014 3:02:00 PM | Men's Tennis

By: Dartmouth

HANOVER, N.H. – In the finals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Regional Championships on Tuesday, senior Chris Kipouras and junior Dovydas Sakinis of the Dartmouth men's tennis team fell to Harvard's Denis Nguyen and Brian Yeung. This is one of the first times in the past 20 years that the Big Green has had a team make it all the way to the finals.

“This was a great tournament for Kip and Dovy,” head coach Chris Drake said. “They showed that when they are concentrating and executing games well, they can be better than some of the best teams in the country. Unfortunately, we didn't execute today like we have done before, and good teams like Harvard will make you pay for that. The guys are disappointed, but they have made a lot of progress with their doubles, and I am happy that they are seeing their hard work pay off. We should still be hungry to keep getting better, though.

Against Nguyen and Yeung, Kipouras and Sakinis narrowly dropped the first set before winning the tiebreaker, 6-7(1). Harvard took the second set and won the tiebreaker, 6-0 (10-5). The Crimson duo will advance to the National Indoor Championships to be played in a few weeks.

“Overall in the tournament, this was a step forward,” Drake continued. “We advanced farther than we have in a long time in both singles and doubles. I know that the team and Tom and I are motivated to continue moving forward and our goal is to have more and more players go farther in the tournament.”

Dartmouth will take the weekend off before traveling to Tennessee for the USTA Knoxville Challenger, which will take place from Friday, Oct. 31 through Sunday, Nov. 9.

Finals: Nguyen and Yeung (Harvard) def. Kipouras and Sakinis (Dartmouth), 6-7(1), 6-0 (10-5)