GSC CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL
 
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - No. 1 and No. 2-seed UWF (23-2, 7-1 GSC) battled hard in the GSC Championship against No. 2 and top-seeded Valdosta State (20-0, 8-0 GSC), a contest pitting the top two teams in the conference, region and nation, but dropped the doubles point and could not recover in a 4-1 loss at Lagoon Park on Saturday afternoon.
 
Doubles lived up to the hype between the two strongest rosters in the conference and possibly the nation, with two ranked-on-ranked matchups, as well as three more coming in singles, and teams coached by the GSC's most decorated and longest-tenured coaches in Derrick Racine and John Hansen, Racine's college coach.
 
No. 8 Edgar Destouet and Arthur Bord started the match with a 6-3 win over No. 44 Tomas Leston and Sebastian Sotelo on court two. Miguel Cabrera and Bernardo Costa knotted it up one court down with their 7-5 victory over Jan Skerbatis and Boruch Skierkier. It came down to the top of the lineup between the No. 1-ranked duo in Diego Duran and Sebastian Rondon and No. 10 Takeshi Taco and Xaveam Van Wijk. Despite trailing 4-2 and 5-4 in the set, Taco and Van Wijk pulled it out via tiebreaker for the Blazers.
 
Skerbatis gave his team a 2-0 lead with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Albin Ekenros on court five. Two courts up, No. 21 Destouet took care of business against No. 32 Sotelo 6-3, 6-0 to get the Blazers one point away from the win. In between those two matchups, No. 40 Duran staved off the VSU win for a time with his 6-0, 7-5 victory over Jerome Iaconi. With matchup No. 6 heading to the third frame, it came down to two tight second sets on courts one and two, between No. 7 Cabrera and No. 2 Taco on top and No. 9 Rondon and No. 5 Skierkier below them. Ultimately, it was Skierkier with the deciding point of the match on court two 6-3, 6-4.
 
"It's a journey, the season," Racine said after the match. "You got regionals coming up, nationals. I mean, the guys are super disappointed. Of course, we wanted to win the conference championship, but we're looking at it as a speed bump, it's a speed bump in our journey. We told the guys, you know, keep your heads up, let's work hard, focus on what's next this week. We've got practice coming up, trying to get a little bit better each day, trying to get in good shape and prepare for regionals and just take it from there. There's a lot of season left. My hats off to Valdosta, they've got a great team, they played their hearts out, and they were just the better team today. You've got the top two teams in the country squaring off, so one of them's going to have to lose, and unfortunately it was us today. But we're going to work hard and hopefully get back."
 
The Argos await their location and destination for the NCAA South Regional from May 10-11, split between two host teams, which will likely be VSU and UWF. The DII tennis postseason selection shows are on Monday, May 5 at 7 pm CT.
 
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