Wichita State men's tennis junior Luke Bracks has qualified for the 2024 Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) National Summer Championships at Leftwich Tennis Center this week in Memphis.
In the first round of 32 Luke, who is from Tulsa, faced the #1 seed Kenta Miyoshi, a Japanese import who plays for Illinois and lost that match 1-6, 4-6. That dropped him into a single consolation match against Sam Reeve, who plays for Memphis. That was a really close match with Luke prevailing in a very interesting super-tiebreaker in lieu of a 3rd set 6-7. 7-5. 10-8. In the super tiebreaker Luke found himself trailing by 3 points at 5-8 before running off 5 consecutive points to win the tiebreaker at 10-8.
In his doubles match Luke paired with Max Schmidhauser, a little used senior who plays for Azusa Pacific, and they where overmatched losing 1-6, 2-6.
Not sure how Luke fits into the Shocker's plans in 2024-25 but he only managed a 5-18 record in singles and 2-10 in doubles last year in what was very much a down year for Shocker Men's Tennis as the team finished 5-18 in dual matches on the season.
No idea what two expect this year. The Shocks graduated two players, Misha Kvantaliani who played primarily at the #1 and #2 singles, and Marcelo Sepulveda who played primarily at the #3 and #4 singles. The are getting senior Kristof Minarik back who played in 2 dual matches in the spring at #3 singles before missing the remainder of the spring presumably due to an injury. Richie King, a sophomore who played mostly #6 singles last year, is not on the 2024-25 roster.
The Shockers have a sophomore transfer from Queens College in Arenui Leuthi, who hails from Switzerland, and 2 incoming freshmen, Romanian Luca Mindrut and Englishman Ilias Worthington.
At this point it is pretty hard to see where any improvement over last year will come from for the Shocks but we'll see.
In the first round of 32 Luke, who is from Tulsa, faced the #1 seed Kenta Miyoshi, a Japanese import who plays for Illinois and lost that match 1-6, 4-6. That dropped him into a single consolation match against Sam Reeve, who plays for Memphis. That was a really close match with Luke prevailing in a very interesting super-tiebreaker in lieu of a 3rd set 6-7. 7-5. 10-8. In the super tiebreaker Luke found himself trailing by 3 points at 5-8 before running off 5 consecutive points to win the tiebreaker at 10-8.
In his doubles match Luke paired with Max Schmidhauser, a little used senior who plays for Azusa Pacific, and they where overmatched losing 1-6, 2-6.
Not sure how Luke fits into the Shocker's plans in 2024-25 but he only managed a 5-18 record in singles and 2-10 in doubles last year in what was very much a down year for Shocker Men's Tennis as the team finished 5-18 in dual matches on the season.
No idea what two expect this year. The Shocks graduated two players, Misha Kvantaliani who played primarily at the #1 and #2 singles, and Marcelo Sepulveda who played primarily at the #3 and #4 singles. The are getting senior Kristof Minarik back who played in 2 dual matches in the spring at #3 singles before missing the remainder of the spring presumably due to an injury. Richie King, a sophomore who played mostly #6 singles last year, is not on the 2024-25 roster.
The Shockers have a sophomore transfer from Queens College in Arenui Leuthi, who hails from Switzerland, and 2 incoming freshmen, Romanian Luca Mindrut and Englishman Ilias Worthington.
At this point it is pretty hard to see where any improvement over last year will come from for the Shocks but we'll see.
Comment