Introduction
The RPI Tennis club held its third annual GM day tournament on Wednesday, April 6, on the Sharp Courts. The club crowned both singles and doubles champions for the tournament.
Twenty-four players entered the singles bracket, but only six managed to escape the competitive first round to reach the quarterfinals. Charles Johnson ’08 and Sebastian Gomez ’07 were the top two winners from the first two rounds, which earned them byes in this round. The two quarterfinal matches were both hotly contested, as Raimi Ishikawa ’05 defeated Kamron Fazel ’07 8-6 and David Doria ’07 beat graduate student Oscar Perez Prieto in a 7-5 tiebreaker. The semifinal contest were not nearly as tight, as Ishikawa overwhelmed Johnson 8-1 in one of the matches and Gomez outlasted Doria 8-2 in the others. The final proved to be exciting as Ishikawa defeated Gomez 9-7 to become the tournament’s first female champion.
In doubles play, 11 teams signed up to participate, containing many of the same players from the singles competition. After tough early round battles Justin Casey ’06 and Tim Fill ’05 squared off with last year’s champions, Juan Arcinegas ’07 and Gomez. Arcinegas and Gomez blanked Casey and Fill 6-0 to hold onto their title.
Kendo squad invades West Point
The Rensselaer Kendo team competed this past weekend in the second annual United States Military Academy Kendo Tournament at West Point where several of the team’s members–Scott Bigler, Brian Amadio, Nikolas Rocchio, and Joo Kyung Kim spent the weekend living at the Cadet Barracks and eating in the Army mess hall.
On Saturday, teams from seven colleges, including Columbia, Yale, RIT, and the University of Florida, came to the Arvin Gymnasium to take part in the team competition. In the round-robin format only the top four teams advanced to the semifinals. RPI, despite being forced to forfeit one match every round was able to soundly defeat Yale’s team and a mixed team composed of competitors from Army and RIT. There was a three-way tie for third place and RPI, being low on team members, was also low on points, and did not advance to the semi-finals.
Sunday’s hosted the individual and the RPI was team again had a solid day. Amadio won three consecutive matches, reaching the semifinals and take home the third place medal while first place went to Yun Lee of HMK.
The RPI Kendo Club will be back in action April 23 and 24 in the ninth Annual Harvard Shoryuhai Kendo Tournament.
Awesome Soccer
The Awesome Team USA intramural soccer squad, winners of the RPI intramural soccer tournament, emerged victorious from the Capital Cup Soccer Tournament, which was held at Siena College back on February 19, 20, and 27. The Capital Cup Soccer Tournament is a competition between the best intramural soccer teams from nine area colleges including RPI, Siena, SUNY Albany, Sage, and Saint Rose.
In the RPI tourney Awesome won all five games scoring 22 goals while allowing just two. In the Capital Cup the Awesome squad defeated Siena 4-0 and Albany 4-1 in the tournament’s first day. The following day they held off Sage 4-2 and again beat Albany by the score of 4-1.
