ROME, GA – A quartet of North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) student-athletes closed out the fall tennis season at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Cup over the weekend. On the women’s side, first-year Lora Szabo (Pakozd, Hungary/Zöldliget Hungarian-English) represented Kenyon College as one of the nation’s top 16 NCAA Division III singles players, while Denison University was represented by junior men’s tennis players Nick Meyers (Cincinnati, OH/Sycamore) and Chika Nwaozuzu (Woodmere, OH/Orange) in the doubles bracket and sophomore Aidan Borosko (Montclair, NJ/Saddlebrook) on the singles side.

All four student-athletes earned spots at the ITA Cup after wracking up runner-up performances at the ITA Central Regional Championships earlier this month. At the ITA Cup, Borosko made it to the quarterfinals of the Div. III men’s bracket, while the doubles duo of Meyers and Nwaozuzu reached the semifinal of the Div. III doubles draw. By winning an ITA Cup match, Borosko, Meyers, and Nwaozuzu all earned All-America honors.

Szabo started singles play on Thursday, October 15, with a tough draw against the tournament’s No. 1 seed. The Owls’ first-year fell 6-2, 6-2 to Amherst College senior Tina She to wrap up her fall campaign. Both of Borosko’s singles matches were close straight-set contests. The sophomore swept Niklas Nordahl Jensen of Whitman College 7-5, 6-3, securing an All-America award with the win. In his next bout against Tufts University’s Garv Bahl, Borosko bowed out after a hard-fought 7-5, 7-6 (7-4) defeat.

In the first round of the doubles bracket, Meyers and Nwaozuzu endured a three-set battle against the Swarthmore College pairing of Connor Chun and Nikola Galov. The Denison duo traded 6-4 sets over the first two frames before outlasting their opponents for a 1-0 (10-8) win in the deciding third set. Meyers and Nwaozuzu rode the momentum to a 6-4, 6-1 sweep over the No. 1-seeded team of Jared Perry and Kishan Kersten from Trinity University, securing a spot in the semifinal match. It came down to another three-set thriller, but Meyers and Nwaozuzu came out on the wrong side of a 6-3, 3-6, 1-0 (10-6) final against the University of Chicago team of Chase Kelley and Jesse Yang, the eventual Cup champions.