ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The 2023-24 Navy men’s tennis season began with the Mids earning four flight victories at the Joe Hunt Invitational held this weekend in Annapolis.
The event featured round-robin flight play between players from Navy, Fairfield, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Mason, Mary Washington, Saint Joseph’s and St. Bonaventure.
Winning singles flights for the Mids were Herrick Legaspi, Jake Young and Matthew McNair. Legaspi posted a 3-0 record to win the Navy 1 flight, Young won two of his three matches to win a tiebreaker — the head-to-head result — and claim the Navy 2 flight title and McNair tallied a 3-0 record to earn the Yellow 1 flight.
Additionally, the Navy doubles team of Graydon Buckingham and Eric Liu put together a 3-0 record to win the Orange doubles title.
Nearly winning a singles flight was J.J. Etterbeek. He tied for first place in the Red 1 flight with a 2-1 record but lost the tiebreaker.
While half of the Navy team was in Annapolis, the other half traveled to Philadelphia to take part in the Penn Invite. There, the Mids faced players from Liberty on Friday, St. John’s on Saturday and Dartmouth on Sunday.
Leading the Mids in singles wins were Sasha Panyan and Steve Nguyen as each recorded victories against opponents from St. John’s and Dartmouth.
Nguyen also earned two doubles victories on the weekend as he teamed with Tommy Kim for a win against Liberty and Jason Kim for a win against St. John’s.
Navy’s fall slate will continue this weekend when Aniketh Ayinala and Nathan Nguyen travel to Milwaukee to take part in the Milwaukee Tennis Classic.