It was a successful long trip to Fort Dodge, Iowa, as the No. 11 ranked Barton Community College men's tennis team defeated a pair of ranked opponents Friday as the Cougars defeated host 15th ranked Iowa Central Community College 6-3 before taking care of 17th ranked Prairie State College 8-1.
Now 8-2 on the season, the Cougars will next compete Friday and Saturday in the SW Juco Tournament held in Plano, Texas, before wrapping up the regular season at home Monday, April 15, against nationally ranked Seward County Community College.
Barton took four of the six doubles matches with the No. 2 duo of Oswaldo Cano and Mariano Cabrera winning both of their matches by 8-4 and 8-2 scores, improving to 9-1 on the year.
In singles play each also won their matches with Cano blanking both No. 2 slot opponents by 6-0 straight set scores to improve to 8-5 on the year. Cabrera improved to 8-3 on the season in the No. 4 singles slot grinding out a 7-5, 6-3, win over ICCC's Harrison Zammit before disposing of PSC's Renan Caleffo 6-2, 6-1.
The No. 3 doubles tandem of Octavio Carrasco and Tom Letecheur were a tiebreak away from going undefeated in the two matches, pulling out an 8-6 win over the Tritons but suffering just their second loss of the season (7-2) in collapsing a 7-4 lead to falling short 9-8 by losing 7-4 in the tiebreak.
When split into singles play, each won both matches with No. 5 slot Carrasco staying undefeated on the season rolling to a pair of wins (6-1, 6-0) and (6-2, 6-1). In the No. 6 spot, Letecheur had a tougher time improving to 8-4 on the year after winning 6-3, 6-2, against Iowa Central, grinding out a 10-8 tiebreak win against Prairie State's Panashe Garah as the two split 6-2 set scores.
In the top doubles spot, Guido Luna and Sebastian Pino experienced both sides of 8-6 scores, dropping the match against Iowa Central before rebounding in the afternoon over Prairie State to run the tandem's season record to 5-7.
Each split a pair of tough marathon matches as Luna left Iowa with a 10-6 season mark in the top singles spot with 38th ranked Pino seeing his No. 3 singles season record sit at 8-5.
Luna began the day dropping the first set 6-4 to the Triton's 48th ranked Sacha Columban before forcing a tiebreak with a 6-0 blanking but fell short 10-8 in the extra frame. Wrapping up the weekend against 49th ranked Jofree Tuca of Prairie State, Luna grabbed the first set 6-2 but a 6-3 result sent the pair to tiebreak with Luna coming out on top 10-8.
Pino and Iowa Central's Colten Way went to tiebreak splitting the first two sets 7-5 and 6-2 with Pino jumping out to an 8-2 lead in the super tiebreak only to have victory snatched by the jaws of defeat as Way stormed back to rattle off eight straight points in pulling out the 10-8 win. Pino closed out his weekend with another grinder, defeating Marek Slojewski 6-4, 7-6 (6).