LAKELAND, Fla. – The Fire are setting the bar high early in the season. Southeastern University added SCAD-Atlanta as its latest shutout, 7-0, over SCAD-Atlanta on Saturday in men's tennis action.
SEU saw its top two doubles teams of Javier Gallego/Gonzalo Fernandez and Piero Fernandez/Diego Menendez ease to wins and it did not give up a set in the six singles bouts.
For the fifth time in seven matches, SEU (7-0) held its opponents scoreless. The Saturday shutout was the Fire's second of the week after taking a 7-0 final from Oglethorpe University last Wednesday.
At the top doubles, the Fire's No. 7-ranked Piero Fernandez/Menendez captured the set by the final, 6-1, over Jakub Bojarski/Mikaeel Woodman. SEU's Gallego/Gonzalo Fernandez bested the Bees' Valentino Capararo/Nicolas Fertonani by the same margin 6-1.
No. 40 ranked Piero Fernandez held serve in the top singles match-up over Woodman starting the singles dominance (7-5, 6-2).
The Fire's Alejandro Orihuela showed the strongest effort in singles at the fourth spot with set scores of 6-2 and 6-1 over Bojarski. Menendez beat Joewyn Pascual, with a second singles final of 6-1, 6-3.
In fifth singles, Mark Griffin had a tale of two different sets when he rattled off a 6-0 first set win before he had to win the second set in the tiebreaker, 7-6 (10-8), over Firas Ben Chouikha.
In the other two singles matches, Gallego won by identical 6-4 scores over Capararo at the third spot, while Gonzalo prevailed over Fertonani in the sixth singles (6-3, 6-4).
SCAD-Atlanta's third doubles pairing of Psacual/Chouikha was able to record a 6-3 win over Griffin/Orihuela.
The Fire return to action on Monday when No. 13 Middle Georgia State comes to Lakeland. First serve is at 1 p.m.
