NEW LONDON, N.H. – May 7, 2018 – The Colby-Sawyer men's tennis team will play Wilkes University of the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) Freedom on Friday in the NCAA Tournament First Round. The match will be played in Middlebury, Vermont at Middlebury College.   

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Middlebury Regional Website

Colby-Sawyer is riding a 6-match winning streak and has not dropped a point during that stretch. The Chargers are 9-10 overall and will make a sixth-straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament after winning Sunday's North Atlantic Conference (NAC)/North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC) crossover championship. The Chargers have been very close to earning the program's first NCAA Tournament victory over the past three years. In 2015, the team fell to Yeshiva 5-3 and in 2016, the Chargers battled with Nichols but fell 5-4. Last season, Baruch edged Colby-Sawyer 5-3.   

Wilkes (20-5) enters its 11th NCAA Tournament after winning its 11th-straight MAC Freedom title. The Colonels are on a five-match win streak and secured the conference title with 5-0 wins over DeSales and King's. Wilkes has won a match in its last three NCAA Tournament appearances.   

Friday's match will be the first meeting between the two teams.

The winner of the Colby-Sawyer/Wilkes match will play the regional host and top-ranked Panthers of Middlebury College (20-4) on Saturday.

The other Friday first-round match is between MIT (11-7) and Cabrini (12-5). The winner will play 24th-ranked Johns Hopkins (18-3).

Match times will be announced on Tuesday.

The teams will play a single-elimination tournament with the first-, second- and third-rounds played at regional sites, Thursday-Saturday, May 10-12, or Friday-Sunday, May 11-13. Claremont- Mudd-Scripps will host the team championship finals, which will be held May 21-26 at The Biszantz Family Tennis Center in Claremont, California. Student-athletes selected to the individual championships will be announced Wednesday, May 9.
 
The championship provides for a 43-team tournament. Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 36 conference champions, which form "Pool A." One team is selected from true independents and schools from conferences that do not have an automatic bid for their champions (Pool B). The remaining six teams are selected from those teams in conferences with automatic bids that did not win their conference's AQ and the remaining Pool B institutions (Pool C). The teams are geographically paired, whenever possible.

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