On an overcast day, earlier than a couple of dozen folks on the Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Heart, a workforce of gamers sporting gentle blue uniforms battles a workforce in darkish blue throughout six courts.
That is the place a university tennis workforce has the best second in its historical past. And the place it goes to die.
For the primary time, the boys’s workforce from St. Francis of Brooklyn was enjoying within the N.C.A.A. match. However after the first-round match was over on Friday, and St. Francis had fallen, 4-0, to Columbia, this system was no extra. St. Francis is dropping all of its sports activities on the finish of the varsity 12 months for budgetary causes.
Chad Davis performed at St. Francis and has been the boys’s tennis coach for 19 years. “Being an alum of the school, being there for therefore lengthy and seeing this system develop 12 months after 12 months and battle after battle, it’s positively a bitter tablet to swallow,” he mentioned.
Making the match appeared unlikely after St. Francis bought off to a 1-10 begin this season, together with a loss in its first convention sport. “It was positively troublesome to start with; we weren’t clicking,” Davis mentioned.
Then in March got here the information that the school’s athletic applications have been being shut down. The college cited “elevated working bills, flattening income streams, and plateauing enrollment.”
“It was very shocking,” mentioned one of many gamers, Luis Foix Sotos, from Jávea, Spain. “Once I noticed the athletic director, her voice was very unhappy. I mentioned, ‘One thing is happening right here.’ When she mentioned the information, some folks have been crying. It was a really unhappy second.”
Davis mentioned, “Simply to listen to it, it was positively a intestine punch.” But the information, the coach mentioned, oddly appeared to rally the workforce. “The blokes sort of got here collectively, and we strung collectively some good wins.”
The workforce received seven of its final eight video games, together with all of its remaining convention video games. However it wanted to win the Northeast Convention match to qualify for the N.C.A.A. match. Within the remaining, it met Fairleigh Dickinson, which had eradicated it the earlier two years.
Foix Sotos was the participant who received the clinching match in a 4-2 victory. “It was the very best feeling ever,” he mentioned. “It was one of many happiest moments of my life. For me, it was epic; it was like a film that led to one of the best ways potential.”
Within the N.C.A.A. match in opposition to Columbia, St. Francis was an enormous underdog; with a 19-Three file, Columbia had achieved the best rating in its historical past, at No. 13 nationally. The match occurred in entrance of principally family and friends, a far cry from when the Billie Jean King Heart is overstuffed with followers paying $24 for rooster tenders on the U.S. Open.
St. Francis was hampered additional by being short-handed, partly as a result of some gamers have been unable to cancel journey plans they’d made when a visit to the match appeared unlikely. Foix Sotos, for instance, performed fourth singles, somewhat than his standard sixth. And Davis additionally needed to miss the match with a well being downside.
Columbia made fast work of the opening doubles matches, and the singles matches have been no nearer. When Columbia received its clinching third singles match, the others have been halted, and St. Francis’s remaining season was completed.
St. Francis was one of many smallest colleges with Division I athletics.
The lads’s basketball workforce was one among simply 4 authentic members of Division I by no means to make the N.C.A.A. match. However the males’s water polo workforce made a number of Remaining 4 journeys, most not too long ago in 2013, and town skyline backdrop to its soccer video games in Brooklyn Bridge Park recurrently made visiting gamers clamor for selfies.
The lads’s and ladies’s monitor groups are the final nonetheless going, however in a couple of weeks their remaining seasons, too, will likely be over.
St. Francis has mentioned it should honor the athletic scholarships of the gamers with eligibility remaining. “A few of the older gamers are planning to remain in New York,” mentioned Foix Sotos, whose personal eligibility is exhausted. “They’ve a life right here, they usually don’t need to switch for just one 12 months. However for the freshmen and the sophomores, all of them need to switch; they’re on the lookout for colleges.”
Athletic officers mentioned they have been getting résumés collectively. Does Davis have any plans after twenty years on the college? “In the meanwhile, no I don’t.”
When the match was over on Friday, the workforce gathered in a circle by one of many nets, arms linked, and shared a non-public second.
“We have been simply saying thanks,” Foix Sotos mentioned.
“My final faculty match,” he mentioned of the sudden go to to the match. “Right now was like a reward for me.”
