DeLand, Fla. ? Four members of the Stetson men's tennis team have found their way onto the list of 2009 Atlantic Sun All-Conference honorees, the league office announced Wednesday. Senior Filip Kricka (Umag, Croatia) was named to the First Team while rookies Cesare Gallo (Portogruaro, Italy), Maksim Levanovich (Minsk, Belarus) and Njal Stene (Oslo, Norway) were all named to the All-Freshman Team.
Kricka finished off his final regular season with his All-Atlantic Sun First Team debut; he had been named to the Second Team as a sophomore in 2007, his first year with the Hatters after transferring from South Alabama. Kricka played #1 singles all year and #2 doubles for most of the season, compiling an 11-10 overall singles mark with a 6-3 A-Sun record and a 15-5 doubles ledger with an 8-1 record. He was 13-4, 7-1 A-Sun when paired with Levanovich. Stetson has had at least one player named First Team All-Atlantic Sun in each of the past five seasons and seven times in the last eight years.
Gallo went 12-6 overall this regular season and 6-2 in A-Sun matches, including an 11-4 record at #5 singles. In doubles play he went 13-8 on the year with a 5-4 conference record. Levanovich, a two-time A-Sun Player of the Week award winner, compiled a 13-6 (6-3 A-Sun) singles record at three different positions, but truly excelled in doubles matches, where he ran up an 18-4 record with four different partners and was 8-1 in A-Sun matches. Stene enjoyed a solid 13-7 (5-3 A-Sun) spring season in singles, appearing at three different spots in the lineup, including a 7-3 record at #4 singles. He paired exclusively with sophomore Chris Swanteson (Vaxjo, Sweden) to go 12-8 (4-4 A-Sun) in doubles matches.
Stetson tied its own Atlantic Sun Conference record by having three players named to the All-Freshman Team in men's tennis. Serguei Boulanov, Peter Dzuba and Eddie Majcher were so honored in 2006. The Hatters have had at least one All-Freshman pick in five straight seasons and six of the last seven years; Head Coach Pierre Pilote has recruited and developed a total of 13 All-Freshman players over that time span, including 2007 A-Sun Freshman and Player of the Year Hicham Laalej.
The Hatters finished the regular season with a 16-6 overall record and went 7-2 in the Atlantic Sun conference schedule, good for a third place finish. Stetson will take the #2 seed in this week's conference tournament in Johnson City, Tenn. and meets seventh-seeded Lipscomb at 2:30 p.m. Thursday. The winner advances to play either third-seeded Belmont or sixth-seeded Mercer in the semifinals at 4:30 p.m. Friday afternoon.
57th-ranked ETSU's senior star Enrique Olivares, the nation's 14th-ranked player, was named A-Sun Player of the Year with his Buccaneers mentor Yaaser Zatini earning Coach of the Year honors. Edgar Rodriguez of 70th-ranked USC Upstate was named Freshman of the Year.
