Plano, Texas - The Harford men's tennis team finished the NJCAA Division I National Tournament with a 12th place finish despite an excellent showing by the Fighting Owl racket wielders.

At the #1 singles spot, Tomas Eduardo Parra Pozo lost a 3-6, 6-2, 10-7 three set match to Travis Bell of Mississippi Gulf Coast State.

At the #2 singles, #7 seeded Xavier Graells lost to the eventual champion Yohan Nguyen of Abraham Baldwin after winning matches in the first two rounds.

Head coach George Budelis on Graells' match: "He played the eventual champion in the 2 flight in the quarterfinals and gave him a scare. Xavier came and playing extremely well and took an early 5-2 lead and was trying to steal the first set, but Nguyen came back and won five straight games to win the set and eventually prevailed to win the tournament as well. Xavier saved his best tennis of the year for the national tournament."

For #3 singles, Alejandro Serrano Clarke lost to champion Enrique Pardo of Tyler Junior College in the second round after a three set victory in round one over Lukas Michenka of Cowley College.

In the #4 singles draw, Flavio Carretero Garbati won over Lake County's Jason Gomez before losing to #3 seeded Lucas Gobet of Abraham Baldwin.

For #5 singles, #5 seeded Bradley Schug won a second round match over Paradise Valley's Victor Tuncap but lost an incredible third round match to #3 seeded Claudio Quinones from Seward County. 

Head coach George Budelis on Schug's match: "He was serving at 2-3 and between first and second serves he was starting to feel nauseous from the heat or nerves or maybe a combination of both. After the first serve, Brad got sick on the court as tournament organizers cleaned it up and he was back in action. He winds up winning that point and the first set. He then plays a close set in set two and loses the set 6-4. So, at an hour into the match we are tied 6-4, 4-6. The third set was long a grueling, but Brad took the lead and eventually had a match point. At this point, we must have had 200 spectators from other coaches, officials, players, etc. that were just watching the fight. At the end of the match Brad's opponent had match point after match point. The bigger the point the better that Brad played and the harder he hit. On the 10^th match point he fell, but he fought for three hours and gave Harford everything he had."

At #6 singles, Pablo Safont Ferrer also lost a three set heart breaker to Collin College's Thomson Tong in the main draw. He was placed in the loser's bracket where he defeated Luke Armstong of Jones County and Will Irvin of Meridian Community College and lost in the bottom draw final match to Jason Roberts of Laredo Community College.

Head coach George Budelis on Safont's match: "Pablo was down early and came storming back winning the second set easily and taking a 5-2 lead in the third before falling in the third set. He then moved into the back draw and went all the way to the finals and played a great match against Laredo. He lost the first set 6-0.  He then fell down 5-2 in the second set. At this point, he came storming back winning the second set in a tiebreaker and then eventually fell in the finals in a third set super tiebreaker."

As for the doubles, Pablo Safont Ferrer and Bradley Schug lost in the #1 doubles spot to the duo from Cowley College in the first round then to Prarie State in the loser's bracket.

At #2 doubles, Xavier Graells and Tomas Eduardo Parra Pozo defeated Jones County in straight sets before losing to Tyler Junior College in the second round.

As for #3 doubles, Luigi Fighera and Alejandro Serrano Clarke lost to Tyler Junior College but defeated Lake County and Meridian Community College to reach the back draw finals where they lost to Wallace State in another three set white knuckler.

Head coach George Budelis on the team's performance: "All of these draws ended in losses for us, but they can only be described as good losses. It doesn't surprise me that these three guys stepped up and played so well to end their careers at Harford. This will go down as one of the greatest teams in our history."