OWATONNA, Minn. (Feb. 22, 2025) - The Buena Vista men's tennis team continued its early season non-conference schedule on Saturday evening inside of the Owatonna Racquet Club with matches against both the College of St. Scholastica and the University of Northwestern-St. Paul, respectively.

Against the Saints (3-0), the lone victory for the Beavers was at No. 3 singles as senior Brock Bruns rallied for a thrilling three-set tiebreaker win. He dropped the opening set, 6-3 and then bounced back in the second for a 6-4 triumph. It came down to the tiebreaker and Bruns was able to hold on for the narrow 11-9 win to take the match.

"St. Scholastica is a very good team and we dug in our heels just a little bit too late," said BVU head coach Brett Groen. "It was a great way to finally get in some live action against opponents who weren't on our own team. Brock did an amazing job in a third set tiebreaker winning a tight one and getting us on the board."

It came down to the wire in the final against the Eagles. Buena Vista came out and swept through doubles play to earn the first team point of the match. All three were tight matches with No. 1 and No. 2 being decided by identical 6-4 margins before Ryan Webb and Tyler Harger teamed up to take the No. 3 outing, 7-5. In singles play, Kaiden DePascale won be retirement at No. 1 while the Beavers also got a strong performance by Harger at No. 5 with a straight-set victory, 6-1, 6-4. Pregon gave it all he had at No. 2 singles but came just short in a three-set tiebreaker after winning the second set 6-4 but then dropping the third, 10-7.

"Everything that happened in the first match pushed us and set us up for how we would fight and play in the second match against Northwestern-St Paul," added Groen. "We actually won five of the nine matches, but due to a scoring system that has been developed, it was a tough loss. However, our doubles set the tone amazingly well, winning at number one, number two, and number three in a straight sweep. All three doubles teams were down early, including number three, down 5-0, but we came back and won all three of them. Kaiden would get a walkover at number one singles because of an emergency, and Tyler would pick up a great win at number five singles. His game has come a long way both mentally and physically and it was great to see him play well today. We had two more matches out on the courts, to try and get us the win, we fell just incredibly short today."

Buena Vista is now 1-3 overall and is set to travel to Westminster College on Saturday, Mar. 1 at 4 p.m. before continuing on to Georgia on Sunday, Mar. 2 to play at LaGrange College (11 a.m.).