NCAA Feature
Ryan Shane and Jamie Loeb Claim NCAA Singles Titles
by
Colette Lewis, 28 May 2015
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A tournament plagued by rain ended with a tornado warning and two ACC champions: North Carolina's Jamie Loeb and Virginia's Ryan Shane. In championship matches started outdoors Monday at the Hurd Tennis Center on the Baylor University campus and completed indoors, Loeb defeated Carol Zhao of Stanford 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, while Shane downed Noah Rubin of Wake Forest 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-1.
The six-day Division I singles and doubles championships couldn't dodge the persistent threat of rain in Waco, Texas, with the quarterfinal rounds played entirely indoors and a tornado warning causing an evacuation just as the singles finals were completed.
Top seed Robin Anderson of UCLA was eliminated in Saturday's quarterfinals by Stephanie Wagner of Miami, a No. 9 seed, while men's top seed Axel Alvarez of Oklahoma was unable to overcome the physical and emotional toll of losing in the team final, falling to Tony Lupieri of Baylor in the second round.
Shane also faced a quick turnaround after helping the Cavaliers to their second team title in the past three years the afternoon before he began singles play.
The junior from Falls Church, Virginia said approaching the first round of the singles tournament as a dual match helped him cope psychologically.
"It was tough," said Shane, the No. 8 seed. "I was on the team the first year they won it, but I wasn't in the individuals, so it was kind of a new feeling to come back out here the next day. I just rested and tried to bring myself down, it was such a high for everyone. The next day I came out and tried to treat it as much as a dual match as I could to help me through it, and after that I just kind of started rolling, knowing that I was on my own."
Like Shane, Rubin lost only one set en route to the final, in the quarterfinals indoors. With Wake Forest losing in the round of 16 of the team event, he had more time to recover before the individual championships began.
In the semifinals, Rubin defeated Shane's teammate, unseeded Thai Kwiatkowski 6-4, 6-4, while Shane advanced to the final with a 6-4, 6-1 win over No. 9 seed Quentin Monaghan of Notre Dame.
Rubin looked to be heading for the history books as the championship match began under cloudy skies, rolling to a 5-0 lead in the first set. Only UCLA men's coach Billy Martin had won the Wimbledon Junior Championships, Kalamazoo and the NCAAs, and Rubin was poised to win them consecutively, an unprecedented accomplishment.
