Box Score Flushing, N.Y. – Senior Kacper Piekarek (Swindon, England/Cirencetser Kingshill School) won at fourth singles to clinch a 4-3 victory for the fifth-seeded Le Moyne College men's tennis team over St. Thomas Aquinas College in the first round of the NCAA Championships East Regional on Friday afternoon at the QC Tennis Bubble.

With the victory, the Dolphins advance to the second round for the third straight year and will take on the host and top-seeded Queens College on Saturday at 4:45 p.m.

Le Moyne grabbed a 1-0 lead in the match by securing the point in the doubles competition. Senior Ethan Miller (Swindon, England/Cirencetser Kingshill School) and graduate student Tom Jarry (Paris, France/CNED Toulouse/Emmanuel) gave the Dolphins the advantage with a 7-5 win over Odysseas Papaioannou and Ludovico Truffelli at the first position. Tony Khamassi and Ondrej Sramek evened doubles at 1-1 apiece with a 6-4 victory over Piekarek and classmate Rodrigo Beires (Porto, Portugal/Agrupamento de Escolas Garcia de Orta/Universidade Portucalense). Sophomore Peter Hatton (Syracuse, N.Y./Jamesville-DeWitt/Club Med Academics/Army West Point) and graduate student Manuel Righi (Bologna, Italy/IPC Manfredi - ITC Tanari/Concordia (N.Y.)/Universita di Bologna) clinched the point for the Dolphins with a 6-1 win at the second position over Tobias Fuerschuss and Don Lominoque.

In the singles competition, Hatton quickly put the Dolphins up by two with a 6-0, 6-0 victory at the first position over Papaioannou to claim his 12th win at the position. Righi pushed the lead to 3-0 with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Fuerschuss at the third spot for his 17th victory of the season.

STAC mounted a comeback by winning the next three decisions to knot the score. Sramek started the comeback with back-to-back scores of 6-4 at the fourth spot over Miller. Truffelli then edged out Jarry at the second position with consecutive scores of 7-5. Lominoque evened the match at three apiece with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over graduate student Alberto Diaz (Tenerife, Spain/Benito Pérez Armas/Nebraska-Kearney/Midwestern State) at the six spit.

Piekarek won the first set against Lennart Lehmann, 6-3, at the fourth position, but then dropped the second set, 4-6. He closed out the victory with a 6-2 win in the third set to send the Dolphins into the second round.