On an overcast day, earlier than a couple of dozen folks on the Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Middle, a crew of gamers sporting mild blue uniforms battles a crew in darkish blue throughout six courts.
That is the place a school tennis crew has the best second in its historical past. And the place it goes to die.
For the primary time, the boys’s crew 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 yr 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 faculty, being there for thus lengthy and seeing this system develop yr after yr and battle after battle, it’s positively a bitter capsule 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 tough to start with; we weren’t clicking,” Davis mentioned.
Then in March got here the information that the faculty’s athletic applications had 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. “After I noticed the athletic director, her voice was very unhappy. I mentioned, ‘One thing is occurring right here.’ When she mentioned the information, some folks had 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 crew. “The blokes sort of got here collectively, and we strung collectively some good wins.”
The crew gained seven of its final eight video games, together with all of its remaining convention video games. Nevertheless it wanted to win the Northeast Convention match to qualify for the N.C.A.A. match. Within the ultimate, it met Fairleigh Dickinson, which had eradicated it the earlier two years.
Foix Sotos was the participant who gained the clinching match in a 4-2 victory. “It was the perfect 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 19-3 file, Columbia had achieved the best rating in its historical past, at No. 13 nationally. The match came about in entrance of largely family and friends, a far cry from when the Billie Jean King Middle 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 had been unable to cancel journey plans they’d made when a visit to the match appeared unlikely. Foix Sotos, for instance, performed fourth singles, fairly than his common sixth. And Davis additionally needed to miss the match with a well being drawback.
Columbia made fast work of the opening doubles matches, with out dropping a set, and the singles matches had been no nearer. When Columbia gained its clinching third singles match, the others had been halted, and St. Francis’s ultimate season was achieved.
St. Francis was one of many smallest faculties with Division I athletics.
The boys’s basketball crew was considered one of simply 4 authentic members of Division I by no means to make the N.C.A.A. match. However the males’s water polo crew made a number of Ultimate 4 journeys, most lately in 2013, and town skyline backdrop to its soccer video games in Brooklyn Bridge Park frequently made visiting gamers clamor for selfies.
The boys’s and ladies’s monitor groups are the final nonetheless going, however in a couple of weeks their ultimate seasons, too, will probably be over.
St. Francis has mentioned it’s going to honor the athletic scholarships of the gamers with eligibility remaining. “A number 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 yr. However for the freshmen and the sophomores, all of them need to switch; they’re on the lookout for faculties.”
Athletic officers mentioned they had been getting résumés collectively. Does Davis have any plans after 20 years on the college? “In the intervening time, no I don’t.”
When the match was over on Friday, the crew gathered in a circle by one of many nets, arms linked, and shared a non-public second.
“We had been simply saying thanks,” Foix Sotos mentioned.
“My final faculty match,” he mentioned of the sudden go to to the match. “Right this moment was like a reward for me.”
