The Irish had a successful start to their 2010 season, going 2-1 this weekend. No. 30 Notre Dame defeated William & Mary 4-3 Friday, suffered a 7-4 loss Sunday morning to No. 2 Virginia but came back to take down IUPUI 7-0 Sunday evening.
The Irish opened Friday's match with a 3-0 lead, but the Tribe fought their way back to tie the match at 3-3. Sophomore Niall Fitzgerald clinched the victory with a 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory at No. 3 singles over the Tribe's Jamie Whiteford.
Notre Dame earned the doubles point in the match with victories at the No. 1 and No. 2 positions. At No. 1 for the Irish, sophomore Casey Watt and junior Tyler Davis defeated Kezial Juneau and Ilja Orre 8-6 while Fitzgerald and junior Stephen Havens took down Sebastien Vidal and Adrian Vodislav 8-5 at the No. 2 spot.
Juneau defeated Watt in the No.1 singles competition, 6-4, 7-5, but the Irish came back with wins in the No. 2 and No. 5 positions from Havens and freshman Blas Moros to hold onto their lead.
Sunday morning saw Notre Dame and the Cavaliers on the courts using an alternative scoring method agreed upon by both teams. The match consisted of 10 single matches, each worth one point, and five doubles matches, each for one double point, for a total of 11 points.
The Irish jumped to a 3-1 lead in the Nos. 7-10 singles, where junior David Anderson, sophomore Samuel Keeton and junior Matt Johnson won the Nos. 8-10 positions. Davis fell 7-5, 6-3 to Virginia's Philippe Oudshoorn in the No. 7 singles.
The Cavaliers cut the Notre Dame lead to 3-2 when they took the doubles point. The duo of Davis and Watt fell 9-8 to Michael Shabaz and Sanam Singh at No. 1 doubles while Keeton and junior Daniel Stahl fell 8-4 at No. 3 and junior Sean Tan and freshman Spencer Talmadge lost 8-5 at the No. 4 position.
Notre Dame's main defeat came in the Nos. 1-6 singles, where Stahl was the only win for Notre Dame at No. 4 with a 7-6 (7-2), 4-6, 7-6 (7-5) defeat of Virginia's Drew Courtney.
Notre Dame had better luck Sunday evening as they swept the Jaguars.
Davis and Havens took the No. 1 doubles spot 8-2 over IUPUI's Deon Shafer and Nick Volz. The trend continued at No. 2 with Talmadge and Tan's 8-3 win and again in No. 3 as seniors Patrick Callaghan and Takashi Yoshii won 8-4.
The sweep continued without much of a challenge in the singles division for the Irish. Havens, Moros, freshman Michael Moore, Davis, Anderson and Keeton all won in two sets.
The Irish travel to Columbus, Ohio, next weekend to compete in the Ohio State regional of the National Indoor Team qualifiers. Notre Dame will face Tulsa at 1 p.m. Saturday.
