CLAREMONT, Calif. — They may as well have played on their own home courts, or at Lisbon High School for that matter, 3,000 miles away. But one of the greatest moments in the history of Bates athletics was a win over virtual neighbor and arch rival Bowdoin, decided in Southern California late Sunday night.

Bates College pair Ben Stein and Amrit Rupasinghe defeated Bowdoin duo Jamie Neely and Oscar Pena 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 for the NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Doubles Championship on Sunday night at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.

Just five minutes before midnight back in Maine, Bates clinched its first NCAA tennis doubles title when Stein, at net, volleyed back a Bowdoin shot to win the final point, following a Rupasinghe serve, at 40-0.

It is the second NCAA tennis crown overall (Will Boe-Wiegaard won the singles title in 2006) for Bates, as well as the second NCAA championship ever for Bobcat athletics in any sport other than track and field.

“There was [added] pressure because it was Bowdoin, our most intense rival in just about every sport,” said Bates head coach Paul Gastonguay. “But at the same time, we knew them and we know we could beat them. The familiarity of knowing the team sometimes adds more pressure, because feel like you’re supposed to beat them. We felt like we had to win. It would have been easier to take if we had lost to anyone else.”

Stein (Pelham, N.Y.) and Rupasinghe (Colombo, Sri Lanka) defeated Washington University in St. Louis doubles team Charlie Cutler and Chris Hoeland 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4 in the semifinals late Sunday afternoon. It was the second straight year the Bates pair has met and defeated the Washington University pair at NCAAs.

Prior to the doubles win on Sunday, Stein — unseeded, just as he and Rupasinghe were in the doubles draw — was defeated in the NCAA singles championship by Emory University’s Michael Goodwin, 7-5, 5-7, 6-1. Goodwin edged Stein in the first set, 7-5, and led 5-3 in the second set. Stein held serve to close the gap to 5-4, then broke Goodwin’s serve to stay alive and tie the set up at 5-5. Stein rode the momentum to capture the next two games and win the set, 7-5, sending the match to a third set, which Goodwin won decisively. Stein finished the season 21-7 in singles play.

The doubles title wrapped up an exhausting three days for Stein in particular. The senior, who played at No. 6 singles for Bates as a freshman, played five singles matches and four doubles matches in the three-day span of the singles and doubles championships, going 4-1 in singles and 4-0 in doubles. In all, he played 24 sets over the three days, including three tiebreakers.

“Amrit was crying his eyes out. Ben was beside himself. He couldn’t believe it,” said Gastonguay, describing the moments after the championship point. “Then we got together for great group hug. It was a really special moment, because a lot of hard work and dedication went into that moment. “The neatest thing was the support we got. Right after the final point, calls, e-mails, texts started pouring in, just people celebrating in places all over the world. I told them, ‘You’re part of a unique club right now.’”

Rupasinghe, the 2007 national singles champion in his native Sri Lanka, told the Lewiston Sun Journal that winning this doubles title outshines that moment in his eyes. “Definitely being a Division III champion,” Rupasinghe said he preferred. “I would say this is something I wanted since I came to college, to win a national championship. I think I’m the first player from Sri Lanka to do that. I couldn’t believe it. It was like, ‘This is not real.’”

Saturday Recap

Stein, the Bates senior, won two singles matches on Saturday to advance to the finals of the singles championship. He then teamed up with Rupasinghe to play his sixth match in two days, and Bates’ two-time All-American Bates duo won that match, too, to advance to the semifinal round.

Stein defeated the top seed in the 32-player field, John Kauss of Gustavus Adolphus, 7-5, 7-5, to reach Sunday’s championship final.

Prior to his semifinal victory, Stein defeated Andrew Wang of Johns Hopkins University in the quarterfinal round on Saturday morning, dropping the first set and edging Wang in a tiebreaker in the second set to stay alive, eventually winning by a 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-0 score.

Stein becomes the third Bates player to reach an NCAA final. His teammate for one year, Will Boe-Wiegaard ’06, played in the final in both 2005 and 2006, winning the championship in 2006, and Buddy Schultz ’81 was the first to reach the singles final, in 1981.

Stein and Rupasinghe then faced the Kenyon College pair of Michael Greenberg (the 2008 NCAA singles champion) and Will VandenBerg. The Bobcats won the first set in a tiebreaker and cruised in the second set for a 7-6(1), 6-2 victory.
Stein, now a three-time All-American, played for the NCAA singles championship earlier in the day. Stein played nine matches in three days. (Photo courtesy of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps)

Friday Recap

The Bates College men’s tennis team saw its top singles player and its top doubles team both earn All-America honors on Friday at the NCAA Division III Tennis Championships. Stein won two singles matches to advance to the quarterfinals of the singles championships, before he teamed up with Rupasinghe to win in the first round of the doubles championship.

Stein defeated Robbie Erani of host Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 6-1, 2-6, 6-2, in the first round of the singles tournament. The win clinched Stein’s second career All-America honor and his first in singles play.

Stein, who is making his NCAA singles debut, advanced to face Mark Boren of Emory University in the Round of 16, defeating the NCAA championship veteran by a score of 6-4, 6-4.

The doubles portion of the tournament began after two round of singles play, and Stein and Rupasinghe, who made it to the semifinals of the doubles tournament last year but were not seeded this year, matched up against the second-seeded team of Max Liberty-Point and Ilya Gendelman of UC Santa Cruz. The Bobcats fell behind early as the Banana Slugs won the first set 6-3, but they rebounded with consecutive 6-3 set wins to advance to Saturday’s quarterfinals.

Stein’s success was all the more stunning considering his tennis background, which unlike most of the other players at the NCAA Championships didn’t include the junior circuit as a teenager.

“It’s cool to beat up on the guys that used to be too good to even bother paying attention to you,” Stein told the Sun Journal. “It shows that when you really dedicate yourself to something, make a decent effort at something, you can get the result you expect.”

Few athletes in Bates College history have ever reached the degree of achievement Ben Stein did May 22-24, 2009, when he won eight matches and lost only one, the NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Singles Championship, and headed home as a national champion.

Stein was unseeded in the 32-player singles field at the tournament, as were he and teammate Amrit Rupasinghe in the 16-team doubles field. Yet he and Rupasinghe won four straight matches to claim Bates’ first NCAA doubles title, even as Stein won four straight singles matches to advance to Sunday’s final, falling in three sets to Emory’s Michael Goodwin 7-5, 5-7, 6-1.

After Stein was finally finished with his run for the singles championship, he and Rupasinghe competed in the semifinals of the doubles championship, outlasting the same pair they defeated last year at the NCAA Championships at Bates in the quarterfinals, Charlie Cutler and Chris Hoeland of Washington University in St. Louis, by a 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4 score.

Improbably, with the NCAA title on the line, the Bates pair matched up against Oscar Pena and Jamie Neely of rival Bowdoin. The match was excellently played by all four players. Rupasinghe had dominant moments in different spots during the match, particularly the first set. But it was Stein who played “like a beast,” in the words of online broadcaster Ken Thomas, in the decisive third set, as the Bobcats won 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 in a moment for the ages in Bates athletics lore.

Bates College senior Will Boe-Wiegaard defeated Middlebury College senior Brian Waldron in straight sets on Monday morning, 6-4, 6-3, to capture the singles championship in the 2006 NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Championships.

It is the first national title for Boe-Wiegaard (Georgetown, Conn.), a four-time All-America who was national runner-up in 2005.

Boe-Wiegaard becomes the first Bates man to win an NCAA championship since 2003. He is also Bates’ first NCAA champion in any sport outside of track and field.

“It hasn’t really hit me yet, but I know this is a dream come true,” Boe-Wiegaard said on his cellphone following his final collegiate victory. “I actually have mixed emotions, because I can’t believe it’s over.”

Boe-Wiegaard ends his senior season with a 25-6 record in singles play. He was unseeded in the 32-player Singles Championship when it began, but en route to the championship he defeated the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 8 seeds — Matt Seeberger of UC-Santa Clara, Waldron and MIT senior Evan Tindell, respectively — all of whom had beaten Boe-Wiegaard in their previous meetings, as had Middlebury senior Nate Edmunds, whom Boe-Wiegaard ousted in the semifinals.

To win the title, Boe-Wiegaard played five singles matches in a period of less than three days, along with two doubles matches with senior teammate Tristan Beach (Grand Rapids, Mich.). Boe-Wiegaard and Beach made it to the quarterfinals of the Doubles Championship.

Boe-Wiegaard first defeated Yoji Masuoka of Emory University, who had helped win the team championship for Emory the day before, 6-3, 6-3. “I made an adjustment and started feeling really good,” said Boe-Wiegaard of the match.

Next up on Saturday was Seeberger, the two-time defending national champion, who had beaten Boe-Wiegaard in the national final the year before. This time, Boe-Wiegaard dropped the first set before reclaiming his groove in a 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 victory.

“That whole day just flew by,” he said. “I was just really zoned in.”

That feeling continued on Sunday, though Boe-Wiegaard admits he was nervous about facing MIT’s Tindell, who had beaten him 6-3, 6-2 during the regular season. “I had lost to him pretty convincingly, and I know he had a boatload of confidence about facing me,” he said. Boe-Wiegaard cruised in the first set, 6-1, but fell behind in the second set 3-0. He then broke serve twice, regaining confidence en route to losing the second set 6-4, which he carried into a 6-3 win in the third set.

Boe-Wiegaard went on to play Middlebury’s Edmunds in the semifinals. The Middlebury senior had beaten Boe-Wiegaard in the ITA tournament semifinals in the fall. “He’s a really consistent player, so he’s very dangerous,” said Boe-Wiegaard. “He’s not going to make mistakes, so you can’t, either. But I felt so good, and I didn’t feel at any point that I would lose.” Boe-Wiegaard cruised into the finals with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Edmunds.

His Monday morning finals opponent, Waldron, is no fun to play against. “He can fire a 135-mph serve down your throat, or just crank forehands by you, left and right,” said Boe-Wiegaard. Plus, rising early in the morning for the biggest match of his life presented its own challenges. “Waking up got worse and worse every day. I was walking around without bending my knees this morning. But after that first game, you feel fine. The adrenaline just takes over.”

Boe-Wiegaard returned to his groove against Waldron in his 6-4, 6-3 victory. He won one game point by diving for a volley that dropped just over the net, though he never saw the ball land. “I heard the umpire say ‘Game, Boe-Wiegaard’, and I just said to myself, ‘Sweet.’

“I couldn’t imagine my college career ending so perfectly,” Boe-Wiegaard said. “I don’t even know how to feel, because it’s all new to me.”

The Bates College men’s tennis team was selected to participate in the NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Championships for the seventh straight year on Monday, the longest such streak of any athletic program at Bates.

The Bobcats (9-9) are one of 27 teams who will play in the tournament, and one of seven teams who will play in the Northeast Region. Three of the teams are at Middlebury and four are at Williams.

Bates is the fourth seed in the field at Williams College and will play the host Ephs (12-3) this Saturday, May 6. The winner will face the winner between Trinity College (13-3) and Bowdoin (7-10) in the second round for the right to move on to the quarterfinal, semifinal and final rounds at the University of Mary Washington May 17-22.

The selection of teams is based on won-lost record, strength of schedule and eligibility and availability of student-athletes. The selection committee considered team results in collegiate matches play from Sept. 6, 2005, until the time of final selections.

In the 2005 championship, UC-Santa Cruz defeated Middlebury 4-1.

Bates College has been selected as the host for the 2004 NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis championships, pending ratification by the NCAA Management Council at a meeting on Oct. 20th. The team tournament will begin on Wednesday, May 12th, and the individual tournament will run from Saturday May 15th through Monday, May 17th at the Wallach Tennis Center.

Bates has hosted three previous NCAA championships, most recently the 1999 NCAA Skiing championships. Bates also served as the host for the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Skiing championships in 1976 and the NCAA Division III Men’s and Women’s Indoor Track championships in 1985.

“We are excited to be chosen as the host institution for the NCAA Division III men’s tennis tournament,” said Suzanne Coffey, Bates’ athletic director. “This event will bring some of the top Division III student-athletes from across the country to the Lewiston-Auburn area.”

Eight teams will be invited to compete for the team title, while the top-32 singles players and the top-16 doubles pairs will vie for the individual titles.

Bates sophomore Will Boe-Wiggard was an All-America selection last year and won his first-round match at the 2003 NCAA championship at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn.

“Will got the chance to see and compete with the best NCAA Division III players in the country last year,” said Bates head tennis coach Paul Gastonguay. “Hopefully we will have similar success this year and an individual, a doubles team, or our whole team will earn a spot in the tournament and get the chance to compete for an NCAA title in front of a home crowd.”

The Wallach Tennis Center consists of eight Plexi-cushion courts, all lighted for evening play with room for over 500 spectators and an observation deck for coaches. The intimate environment gives spectators a chance to be close to the action. With all eight courts at the same site, coaches and spectators can easily track the progress of every match.

“We take great pride in our facilities,” said Coffey. “The Wallach Tennis Center will be the perfect venue for a national championship. The facility provides our men’s and women’s tennis teams with one of the best places to practice and compete in the country. This is a great chance for us to show others what a special place Bates is.”