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Trinity Men Retain Regular Season National Championship

Feb 17, 2002 © 2002 Rob Dinerman. May not be reproduced online or in print without permission.

Trinity Overwhelms Princeton To Capture Fifth Straight NISRA Crown

The concern was clearly written all over Trinity co-captain Lefika Ragontse's expressive and dreadlock-surrounded face. Right below him from his perch in the front row of the second gallery court, his Bermuda-born teammate Nickolas Kyme had seen a 7-5 first-game lead against Princeton senior captain Peter Kelly dissolve into a 9-7 defeat and was tinning himself into a big hole in the second game as well. Unless his burly Brooklyn-born opponent lost his momentum (which he never would the rest of the three-game way), Kyme was headed for defeat.

EARLY PRINCETON MOMENTUM

On the court to Ragontse's right, his freshman teammate Nadeem Osman had also blown a 7-5 lead to lose the first, was also trailing early in the second against Tiger No. 6 Dent Wilkins and (though thankfully unbeknownst to anyone but himself and Bantam head coach Paul Assaiante) had vomited between games (as he would after the second game as well) as a very tangible reminder of the intestinal flu that had felled several Trinity members (including starter Pat Malloy, whose bout was severe enough to prevent him from even making the trip) early in the week.

Furthermore, both of the other "evens" in the first shift of this February 16th meeting between undefeated and newly crowned Ivy League champion Princeton and also undefeated four-time defending NISRA champion Trinity, namely the No. 2 battle between reigning Intercollegiate Individual title-holder David Yik and Trinity's Michael Ferreira and the match at No. 8 between Bantam co-captain Rohan Juneja and Rob Siverd (one of the heroes in the previous week's 5-4 Ivy clincher at Harvard), were headed in Princeton's direction in the early going as well.

And Ragontse himself would in the second shift at No 3 be facing a Tiger opponent, Canadian-born Danny Rutherford, who had defeated him in five games two months earlier on Lefika's home Trinity turf in the final round of the USSRA Five-Man Team Championships.

The defending champion Bantams had managed to win that final, four matches to one, but Princeton, whose top five is considered the best in the Tiger history by longtime head coach Bob Callahan, had threatened to win several of those December matches and had now gotten off to a dream start in this confrontation to determine the 2001-2002 NISRA championship.

MOMENTUM QUICKLY TURNS
But by the time Ragontse actually had taken the court along with the other contestants in the odd-numbered positions, Trinity's crisis moment had passed. Kelly would win in three and thus complete his undefeated dual-meet season over the shell-shocked Kyme (whose demeanor had acquired a deer-in-the-headlights quality by early in his tin-filled second game), but none of Kelly's teammates were able to capitalize on their initial momentum, nor, inexplicably, did any of Princeton's doughty but out-manned contingent receive anything close to the crowd support that just 14 days earlier had played such a major role in spurring them to a dramatic 5-4 victory over a Yale team that at one point had appeared poised for victory.

WHERE WERE THE FANS ???

Whether the normally numerous and vocal Tiger supporters had exhausted their energy in the Yale match or opted to spend the unseasonably balmy afternoon in other pursuits or simply were so conditioned to accept the implausibility of their troops defeating the heavily-favored Trinity juggernaut that they failed to grasp the very real possibility that emerged early on of accomplishing that very feat---whatever the explanation, the turn-out was disappointingly small and even more disappointingly subdued ("It feels like someone just died," the usually upbeat Callahan remarked to his Trinity counterpart Paul Assaiante at the near-silence that greeted the teams when they strode onto the main exhibition court for pre-match player introductions) and the chance for what would have been a major upset correspondingly faded into oblivion beneath the relentless meat-grinder of the all-devouring Trinity machine.

Although Osman never would get his formidable arsenal fully in gear, by the end of the second game, whose early deficit he overcame to win fairly easily, his eventual 3-1 win over Wilkins seemed pretty well assured. Rohan Juneja similarly controlled the last half of his four-game win over Siverd and when the British-born Ferreira pinned a third-game shut-out on Yik to take a two games to one lead, Trinity seemed back in the saddle.

YIK'S SLUMP
Yik, whose recent slump had started one week earlier at Harvard, where he was drubbed in three by Crimson No. 2 James Bullock, battled to a game-point in the fourth, but by that time Smith's match-long pressure had inflicted too many body blows on his much-smaller rival, and he won that game in a tiebreaker to give the Bantams a commanding four matches to one margin at the break.

Yik has lost. at least temporarily, the confidence that fueled his march to the Individual title that his older brother Peter, Princeton class of 2000, won in both his junior and senior years, and he now faces the challenge of regaining this important quality for the Art Potter team tournament next week at Harvard and for his title defense in the Individual competition scheduled at Jadwin on March's opening weekend.

TWO EASY WINS

Senior Rohan Bhappu scored an easy win (Photo: Trinity)

Both senior Rohan Bhappu at No. 7 and junior Jonathan Smith at No. 5 dominated their matches with Aaron Zimmerman and Eric Pearson respectively, combining for three 9-0 whitewashes and not allowing their beleaguered opponents more than two points in any of the six total games.

Zimmerman lost matches in both of the 5-4 team wins over Yale and Harvard earlier in the month, while Pearson, a hero in the Yale meet with his fifth-game win over Bulldog Chris Olsen, seemed to be still demoralized by the rout he suffered at the hands of Harvard's Michael Blumberg in the interceding meet at Cambridge and was never in his match with Smith.

But before either Bhappu or Juneja could complete their convincing triumphs, their teammate, second-semester freshman Reggie Schonborn, had (barely) closed out his third and concluding game with Nate Beck to give the Bantams their fifth win, thereby clinching the team victory that officially gave the program the NISRA title.

The freshman Beck, who had rallied from 1-1, 3-8 in the third game of his match six days earlier against Harvard's Ryan Abraham to take that game in a tiebreaker en route to his vital four-game win, made a late run in this match a well, saving a number of third-game match-points and going from 4-8 to 9-8, game-ball before grudgingly yielding, 10-9. Interestingly in light of its official significance, the conclusion of this match was witnessed by fewer than a dozen observers; most of the Bantam contingent was not even aware of either the fact or significance of the outcome until they were apprised by a reporter, who afterwards remarked to a colleague on their lack of reaction upon receiving the news that their 16-0 regular season and fifth straight NISRA title were now officially secure.

Many clustered around the first two exhibition courts to see their No. 1 freshman sensation Bernardo Samper demonstrate his exceptional dynamism in his straight-game win over Will Evan(whose chance for an upset ended when he failed to cash in a second-game 8-4 lead) and Ragonste, Yik's co-finalist in last year's Individual tourney, rebound from a first-game defeat and avenge his loss to Rutherford ten weeks earlier in a fourth-set tiebreaker that ended on a Ragonste forehand reverse-corner that hit the crack and skidded sharply enough to barely elude Rutherford's full-body diving attempt to retrieve it.

144-2 !

Lafike Ragontse graduates undefeated (Photo: Trinity)

But even in the wake of this fortuitous happenstance and the 8-1 overall win it completed, Trinity was very restrained in its celebration. Ragonste and fellow seniors Bhappu and the Juneja twins, Gaurav(who played and won at No. 10) and Rohan, ended up with a four-year dual-meet record of 66-0 and this year's crew won 144 of its individual matches while dropping only two: Kyme's defeat today and Bhappu's four-game loss to Harvard's Blumberg.

ON TO CAMBRIDGE ...
As they prepared to support the Trinity women's team the following day in the latter's Howe Cup final at Yale with a Harvard team the women had a barely defeated a few weeks ago, the men's team knew that the only way they could truly celebrate the wondrous dynasty they and Coach Assaiante have constructed was by winning the Potter Trophy post-season tournament next week in Cambridge. And they have a quiet confidence that they can accomplish this feat for the fourth consecutive time and strong determination to do so.

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