Rojmar and Szumanski Participate in NCAA Championships
May 20, 2008 | Men's Tennis
May 20, 2008
TULSA, Okla. - The 2008 NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships begins tomorrow, May 21, as the Texas Tech men's tennis team's senior Bojan Szumanski qualified for the third-time in singles, and the 13th-ranked team of Szumanski and Christian Rojmar qualified for the second straight year in doubles.
Szumanski is currently ranked No. 33 in singles with a 21-9 record, 16-7 in duals, and has been nationally ranked for three straight seasons, two within the ITA's top 25. Playing the No. 1 position for the Red Raiders this year, his most notable win was when he clinched the 4-3 upset with a third-set win over Texas' No. 10 Dimitar Kutrovsky. After traveling to Tulsa earlier this week to prepare, he is set to face Mississippi's top single player No. 22 Erling Tveit in the first round of this year's championships tomorrow, May 21, at 2 p.m. Tveit holds a combined singles record of 20-12 after posting an 11-8 duals record, defeating 13 ranked opponents.
At last years' championships Szumanski was the first Red Raider to advance to second round after defeating Pennsylvania's Jason Pinsky in three sets. In the second round he came up short against LSU's No. 24 Ken Skupski, losing 6-4, 6-3. In doubles action, Rojmar and Szumanski suffered a first-round loss to Miami's No. 5 Josh Cohen and Luigi D'Agord, 7-6, 6-1, in the first round.
Tech's top duo of Rojmar and Szumanski have been ranked among the top 15 teams for the duration of the season, including being ranked as high as No. 2 nationally. After being the first doubles team in program history to qualify for the National Indoors, the two received a No. 3 seed into the 16-team draw. The pair dropped a close first-round contest, but worked their way into the finals of the consolation bracket by defeating teams from both Ohio State and Miami. In the finals, the Red Raider duo had a chance to redeem a loss earlier in the season at the ITA All-American to the No. 2 seed from Mississippi Jonas Berg and Erling Tveit, but unfortunately came up short losing 8-6.
In the first round of the doubles draw, Rojmar and Szumanski will square-off with Wake Forest's 7th-ranked Steven Forman and Cory Parr on Thurs. May 22. Forman and Parr are 15-8 in duals, 19-9 overall, which includes an impressive 8-5 win over the nation's top-ranked pair from Virginia, Treat Huey and Somdev Devvarman, at the conference championships.
Szumanski is one of the most decorated players college tennis players to date, and will go down as Tech's all-time winningest singles and doubles player as he looks to improve on his 90-47 career singles and 61-43 career doubles record. He is a three-time All-Big 12 singles honoree, two-time All-Big 12 doubles with Rojmar, three-time Academic All-Big 12, 2005 Academic All-American, and two-time first team Academic All-District VI. Also, he is the only player in program history to have participated in the NCAA Team and Singles Championships three times.
Players Mentioned
