Box Score The Hillsdale College men's tennis team came up just short of their first victory of the season on Saturday, battling hard with visiting Lake Superior State by falling by a razor thin margin in a 4-3 defeat in the Biermann Athletic Center.

In a close match where a couple of changed points could have shifted the outcome, the result in doubles loomed large. Hillsdale sophomores Ellis Klanduch and Henry Hammond rolled to a 6-1 victory at No. 1 doubles, while Lake Superior State claimed a 6-3 victory at the No. 2 position. Hillsdale fought hard to claim the point at No. 3 doubles, forcing a tiebreak, but ended up falling 7-3 in the tiebreak to Lake Superior State, who took a critical 1-0 lead.

In singles play, Hillsdale picked up three victories, including two hard-fought three set wins. Klanduch rolled in the third-set super tiebreak over LSSU's Jordan Fraile Raton for a 6-2, 3-6, 10-4 victory at No. 2 singles, and Rintaro Goda picked up his first win of the spring with a 6-3, 1-6, 11-9 victory over the Lakers' Lezan Koyuncu at No. 6 singles. Freshman Eddie Bergelin played an impressive match at No. 5 singles as well for the Chargers with a 6-4, 6-0 victory over LSSU's Maxence Hamon, but the last victory Hillsdale needed to take the match proved elusive in a narrow loss.

Hillsdale (0-2) is in action again tomorrow at 10 a.m. with a match against visiting Edinboro, and will look to put the lessons learned in the first two matches into practice and pick up its first win of the season.

Photo by Vincent Hill