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6th ranked Cougar tennis rallies for tough victory at McPherson; sets sights on Saturday's Barton Classic #GoBarton

Barton men's tennis player Barnabas Kalaba against Emporia State University.
Posted: Mar 16, 2022

Trailing after doubles play, it took the final match of Wednesday's action at NAIA receiving votes McPherson College to determine the winner as the 6th ranked Barton Community College men's tennis team rallied for a 4-3 victory.

Barton will next play two matches in Saturday's Barton Classic at Great Bend's Veteran's Park, taking on Iowa Central Community College at 10:00 a.m. followed by an approximate 6:00 p.m. match against Newman University. Iowa Central and Newman will tangle at approximately 2:00 p.m. or following the conclusion of the Barton-Iowa Central match with the Cougars versus Newman to follow.

The Cougars fell behind 1-0 in the match dropping two of the doubles matches in the tiebreak. The lone win came at the No. 2 as James Kaoma and Barnabas Kalaba stood victorious 6-2 over the NAIA's Central Region 7th ranked tandem of Martin Millos and Oscar Brouwer.

Barton's No. 1 duo of Gustavo Campos and Tsholofelo Tsiang dropped a 9-7 tiebreak score to the NAIA's 20th's ranked combo of Michael Beltran and Jakob Komel while the No. 3 tandem of Eduardo Morais and Samyak Bajracharya also lost in a breaker 7-4 to the Bulldogs' Trey Murphy and Daniel Marcano.

In singles play Barton won the match by taking four of the six matches including Tsiang's come-from-behind 5-7, 7-6(7), and 10-6 victory over Zhiyuan Wei providing the difference maker in the No. 6 spot.

All six matches were highly competitive as two of Barton's previous three victories also came in the tiebreak. No. 2 Kaoma won in the third 10-7 after splitting 6-1, 3-6, sets with the central region's No. 14 Martin while Morais came out on the positive end of a 10-8 tiebreak No. 3 slot victory over region 19th ranked Brouwer after splitting sets 7-6 and 3-6. In the No. 4 spot, Kalaba prevailed in consecutive 7-5 set wins over the Bulldogs' Murphy.

As Barton won by narrow margins, they also lost by narrow margins. No. 1 singles player Campos lost in 6-4 consecutive sets to the NAIA's 43rd ranked Beltran as Bajracharya dropped a 10-5 tiebreak in the No. 5 singles to Marcano after winning the first set 6-3 dropping the second by an identical 6-3 score.