The Basics
• Location: Baltimore, MD • McClure Tennis Center
• The Short Story: Freshman Ryan Hellinger and sophomore Alex Matisse led eight members of the Johns Hopkins men's tennis team with a fourth-place finish at the 2018 Loyola Invitational.
 
How it Happened
• The invitational was played as a "Points of a Compass" tournament where two players formed a team and played four matches. The teams squared off in doubles before playing two singles matches. The team that won the best-of-three round advanced. The losing pair moved to the consolation bracket. Other schools participating were host Loyola, Mount St. Mary's and Lafayette.
• Matisse and Hellinger opened with a 2-1 win over J.J. Good and Nathan Ferro of Loyola in round one. The pair then beat Kyle Gower and Benny Glezer, also of Loyola, by a 2-1 score to advance to the semifinals. There, Matisse and Hellinger fell to Jackson Wood and Parth Sharma of Mount St. Mary's, 2-1. In the third-place match, the Blue Jay duo lost to another Mount St. Mary's duo, Alonso Garcia and Jean Armstrong, 2-1.
• Freshman Brian Wang and junior Charlie Humes finished in a tie for 5^th place. The pair opened the weekend with a 3-0 win over Paul Caruso and Jamie Hill of Lafayette. They then fell to Skyler Gates and Matt Fitzmaurice of Loyola, 2-1, in the quarterfinals. The pair then beat Barry and Baldwin, 2-1, before tying Gower and Glezer, 1-1, in the fifth-place match.
• Sophomores Jack Hogan and Aaron Wang finished in eighth place with one win and three losses. They opened with a 2-1 win over Colin Corsini and Edik Pribitkin of Loyola. The duo then lost to Wood and Sharma, 3-0. In the consolation draw, Hogan and Wang lost to Gower and Glezer, 2-1, and then fell by the same score to Will Barry and Brandt Baldwin of Lafayette in the seventh-place match.
• Finishing in 10^th place were sophomore Eric Yoo and freshman Eric Burrer. The duo lost their opener, 2-1, to Garcia and Armstrong. They followed that with a 2-1 win over Grant Williford and Colin Kanuch of Loyola in the consolation quarterfinals. Yoo and Burrer then beat Pribitkin and Corsini, 2-1 to move onto the ninth-place match. There, they fell to Gabe Santos and Evan Hine of Mount St. Mary's, 2-1. 
 
Up Next
• Hopkins wraps up fall play at the 2018 ITA Southeast Regional in Fredericksburg, VA September 28-30.