Contact: Alex Mielcarz, Athletics Communication Graduate Assistant, ajmielcarz@noctrl.edu
KENOSHA, Wis. (Sept. 12, 2026) – The North Central College men's tennis team kicked off its fall season in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the past two days, taking part in the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) Fall Invite hosted by Carthage College. Out of the eight flights in the individual tournament, four Cardinals earned five top-three finishes while Philipp Wottgen took home the championship in the tournament's top flight.
Wottgen and Henry Ros started the weekend in the top flight of players. Both players won their opening matches by the same score, 8-3, advancing to the semifinals. Ross fell in his semifinal match 8-3 to Augustana College's Santiago Diaz, while Wottgen defeated Colin Klein of Millikin University 8-7 (7-5) to advance to the flight championship, where he would face Diaz. Wottgen took home the flight championship in straight sets Saturday, winning 6-4, 6-2.
Ros fell in the third-place match to Klein in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4, to take fourth place in the top flight.
Andres Valverde Gonzalez was the lone Cardinal to compete in the second flight. He won his opening match 8-6 to advance to the semifinal, where he lost 8-4, setting him up for a third-place match on Saturday against Carthage's Finnian Morris, a match Morris would win in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4.
Hector Diaz, a freshman out of Aurora, Illinois, made his debut in the third flight. He defeated his challenger 8-4 before losing in the semifinal to Carthage's Cyriac Cayuela. Diaz faced Millikin's Taylor Elliot on Saturday in the third-place match, a match that required a tiebreaker to determine. Taylor took the first set 6-4, but Diaz answered back with a 6-1 win, going on to win the tiebreaker 10-6 to claim North Central's second top-three finish of the weekend.
Rafael Lessa claimed the third top-three finish for the Cardinals, doing so in the fourth flight. He defeated his first opponent 8-5 and his second 8-4 to advance to the championship match, where he faced Carthage's Victor Pimenta. Pimenta would get the best of Lessa in the championship match, defeating him 6-1, 6-3, giving Lessa a strong second-place finish in the flight.
The fourth top-three finish for North Central came courtesy of David Vilarroig Martinez in the fifth flight. He took his first match 8-6 before losing in the second 8-5, sending him to the third-place game on Saturday. Martinez took home a straight-set victory over Aingeru Garcia Acebo, 6-2, 6-4, to clinch third place in the flight.
Brandon Paasch dominated his first match in the sixth flight, winning 8-1, but struggled in the semifinal, getting swept 8-0. Paasch took fourth in the flight after retiring from the tournament.
Louis Carmona, a freshman from France, made his Cardinal debut in the seventh flight, winning his first match 8-5. He then went on to win his semifinal match 8-4, setting up a flight championship match with Augustana's Fernando Carrillo Jimenez, a match that Jimenez won 6-4, 6-3, securing North Central's fifth top-three finish on the weekend.
Eddie Morales made his season debut in the eighth and final flight of the tournament. He dropped his opening match 8-4, but proceeded to win his next two matches 8-6 and 6-4, 4-6, 10-8 to claim fifth in the flight.
Milan Miskovic also played in the eighth flight. He took home an 8-4 win in his first match before losing 8-3 in the semifinal. Miskovic finished fourth in the flight after losing the third-place match 6-3, 6-2.
The Cardinals went 9-1 in first-round matches in the tournament, going on to finish in the top-three spots in four of the eight flights.
North Central is back on the court on October 2 in Brownsburg, Ind., at the ITA Central Region Championships.
