ORLANDO, Fla. – The North Carolina A&T men's tennis team is on spring break in sunny Florida. Well. Kind of.
The Aggie men have made what has become their annual spring break trip to Orlando, Fla., to play seven matches at the United States Tennis Association (USTA) National Campus. They played two of those matches on Monday, beating Michigan Tech 5-2 in the morning before dropping their first match of the season, a 4-1 decision, to the Temple Owls.
A&T's win over the Michigan Tech Huskies was the Aggies' most compelling victory this season. For the first time this season, the Aggies did not get a 7-0 sweep. In fact, they got swept in the doubles point to give the Huskies a 1-0 advantage going into singles play. The Huskie duo of Laurent Teysseire and Landon Coates handed the A&T pair of sophomore Jindrich Brill and Kaua Santos their first loss of the season with a 6-2 win at No. 1 doubles.
Freshmen Ben Werle and Illia Olefir also lost for the first time as a doubles tandem, falling to Tech's Sabri Laphitz and Ian Pinnoo 6-3. Tech completed the sweep with a win at No. 2 doubles as Haitam Aboufirassi and Sarth Bansode defeated senior Mathieu Dussaubat and freshman Niklas Laux 6-3. Dussaubat helped the Aggies battle back, however.
He made quick work of Bansode at No. 6 singles, defeating him 6-0, 6-1 to even the match 1-1. Santos moved to 5-0 as the Aggies No. 1 singles player with a 6-0, 6-2 over Teysseire. Freshman Gabriel Linovic put the Aggies in command of the match by defeating Aboufirassi 6-3, 6-4 at No. 5 singles.
The Huskies stayed alive at No. 4 singles when Andres Horobeanu entered the action and defeated Laux 6-4, 2-6, 7-6. However, Brill put the Huskies away with an excellent and challenging win at No. 2 singles. After dropping the first set to Coates, 6-3, he dominated over the next sets, winning 6-0, 6-1, respectively, to also remain undefeated at 5-0.
Olefir also had a back-and-forth three-setter that resulted in him winning the first 6-3 before dropping Set No. 2 6-4. Olefir recovered to win the third set 6-4, improving to 5-0 on the season. Later in the day, the Aggies had to face the Owls from the Group of Five Atlantic-10 conference, and the undefeated Aggies looked up to challenge early.
They took one of three doubles matches, winning at No. 2 doubles as Laux and Dussaubat defeated Nemani Pranav and Erden Er 6-3. Laux and Dussaubat are now 4-2 on the season. Before their impressive victory, teammates Olefir and Werle lost at No. 3 doubles to Alberto Blumenschein and Oliver Aguilar 6-4. Brill and Santos lost their second doubles match of the day, falling to Lance Cochran and Maj Najvirt Kolaric 7-5.
"I'm proud of the fight our guys showed from the first point to the last," said A&T head coach Dejon Bivens. "We battled across the board. Doubles was competitive, and we were in position to grab momentum early."
The first battle came at No. 6 singles, where Dussaubat dropped a 6-2, 6-1 match to Blumenschein to give the Owls a 2-0 advantage. Aguilar made it 3-0 with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Linovic at No. 5 singles. Brill followed by posting a clutch victory for the Aggies. He kept the match going when he defeated Najvirt Kolaric 6-1, 6-4. The win improved Brill to 21-3 as an Aggie and 6-0 in 2026.
The clincher came at No. 4 singles when Temple's Matteo Crespi defeated Laux 7-5, 6-3 to give the Owls the necessary four wins to stop the action. When the action stopped, the Aggies were in two highly competitive matches. Santos dropped the first set to Aayush Bhat at No. 1 singles but was in a 5-5 tussle in the second set before the match went unfinished. At No. 3 singles, Olefir won his first set 6-4 and was also in a 5-5 tussle before the clincher halted his matchup with Cochran.
"We're seeing some rookie mistakes, which is expected, but those are correctable," said Bivens. "The encouraging part is the fight, the energy, and the belief. Sometimes you take one step back to take two steps forward, and today was a step in the right direction in terms of growth."
A&T's growth process will continue on Tuesday in Orlando when they face St. Bonaventure at 10:30 a.m.
