The Binghamton men’s tennis team opened the fall slate of its 2024-25 campaign at the BU-hosted NateRentals.com NEC Invitational this past weekend. The Bearcats, who retained eight players from their NEC championship-winning 2023-24 roster, secured victories in the B and E singles flights, as well as a first-place finish in the B doubles flight.

“This was our opening tournament, and you could definitely see the difference in some of the teams that had played a couple of events already in the year versus our guys,” said Binghamton head coach Nick Zieziula. “But I thought all in all our guys competed hard, and we had some success in some of the lower flights.”

Throughout the entire competition, Binghamton recorded 12 singles wins and seven doubles wins. Leading the pack for BU was senior Zubin Omar, who won all three singles matches, winning the B singles flight. He built on his already strong performance, teaming up with sophomore Andre Ajed to go undefeated and win the B doubles flight. Ajed also found success in his respective flight, but after winning his first match, he fell in the D flight consolation finals to Saint Francis’ Beau Welker, 6-1, 4-6, 7-10.

“[We had success with Omar] getting a flight win in both singles and in doubles,” Zieziula said. “I thought the ways that the guys supported each other this weekend, and battled back after some disappointing losses was really exceptional. I think in the long run that poses well for our season.”

Juniors Andrew Fang and Jonathan Arbittier rounded out the singles performances for BU. Fang competed in the C flight, winning his first two matches to advance to the flight finals, but he was taken out by Saint Francis’ Kevin Suresh, 6-0, 6-4. Arbittier won his first matchup in two sets, and his second in super tie-breakers, before a walkover in the finals led to his victory in the E singles flight.

“Given how many returners we had, the familiarity with each other and the lack of other competition opportunities, right off the bat we wanted to start with where we left off last year,” Zieziula said. “We had very successful doubles pairs last year … We’ll probably do a fair bit of mixing around in practice over the next couple of weeks, and see where things go.”

BU displayed its rust at times in the doubles portion of the Invitational, as Ajed and Omar were the only BU pair that left with a winning record. Juniors William Morais Binnie and James McPherson won their first match as a duo, but they fell to the duo of Alan Gonzalez and Kevin Kruzel from Saint Francis 7-6 (13).

“I think [Morias Binnie] and [McPherson] in the top flight lost a heartbreaker,” Zieziula said. “They battled really hard, they were down 5-1. I think they won three sudden-death-deuce points in a row, games in a row to bring that back, and actually had three match points in the tie-breaker. They battled very hard.”

The Bearcats will continue their season at the Navy Gold Invitational from Friday, Oct. 11 to Sunday, Oct. 13. The first match is set for 9 a.m. at the Fluegel-Moore Tennis Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.