Contact: Drew Sauer, Assistant Sports Information Director, 630-637-5324

Box Score

ELMHURST, Ill. (May 8, 2021) – The North Central College men's tennis team's quest to break a 60-year drought at the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) Championship will have to wait another year as the Cardinals fell just short to Augustana College, 5-4 on Saturday in a back-and-forth match at Brune Tennis Courts.

The Vikings (11-6) scored the opening point with a 8-3 win at No. 3 doubles, but Javier Suarez Balsera and Ramon Vilarroig Martinez stormed out to a 5-0 lead and had to fight off Peter Alex and Kyle Boudreau, 8-6 to even the score 1-1.

North Central (11-5) then came out on the wrong end of a 8-7 final at the No. 1 position in what ended up costing the Cardinals in the end.

Singles play opened on a high note for North Central, as Vilarroig Martinez cruised to a 6-1, 6-0 victory over Alvaro Leal at the No. 2 position to once again knot the match score, before Guillermo Gonzalez Fernandez quickly gave the Cardinals a 3-2 lead with a 6-0, 6-0 shutout of Alex at the No. 3 position.

Augustana responded with a straight-set win at No. 4 to tie the match for the third time, but Steven Mears put North Central back on top with a decisive 6-2, 6-2 win at No. 6 over Justin Cassens.

Refusing to go down without a fight, the Vikings landed a 7-5, 6-3 win at No. 5 to push the match to 4-4 with only the No. 1 singles position remaining.  Suarez Balsera left everything he had on the court but came up just short in a 7-6 first-set final to Caio DeRezende that lasted nearly one hour and 30 minutes, and eventually fell 6-2 in the second.

North Central's second-place finish at the CCIW Championship is the best since the program finished runner-up in 1990.