On an overcast day, earlier than a number of dozen individuals on the Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Heart, a group of gamers carrying gentle blue uniforms battles a group in darkish blue throughout six courts.
That is the place a university tennis group has the best second in its historical past. And the place it goes to die.
For the primary time, the boys’s group from St. Francis of Brooklyn was enjoying within the N.C.A.A. event. 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 12 months 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 12 months after 12 months and battle after battle, it’s positively a bitter capsule to swallow,” he stated.
Making the event appeared unlikely after St. Francis acquired off to a 1-10 begin this season, together with a loss in its first convention sport. “It was positively troublesome at first; we weren’t clicking,” Davis stated.
Then in March got here the information that the faculty’s athletic packages had been being shut down. The varsity cited “elevated working bills, flattening income streams, and plateauing enrollment.”
“It was very stunning,” stated one of many gamers, Luis Foix Sotos, from Jávea, Spain. “Once I noticed the athletic director, her voice was very unhappy. I stated, ‘One thing is occurring right here.’ When she stated the information, some individuals had been crying. It was a really unhappy second.”
Davis stated, “Simply to listen to it, it was positively a intestine punch.” But the information, the coach stated, oddly appeared to rally the group. “The fellows sort of got here collectively, and we strung collectively some good wins.”
The group 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 event to qualify for the N.C.A.A. event. Within the last, 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 one of the best feeling ever,” he stated. “It was one of many happiest moments of my life. For me, it was epic; it was like a film that led to the easiest way attainable.”
Within the N.C.A.A. event in opposition to Columbia, St. Francis was an enormous underdog; with a 19-3 report, Columbia had achieved the very best rating in its historical past, at No. 13 nationally. The match passed off in entrance of principally family and friends, a far cry from when the Billie Jean King Heart is overstuffed with followers paying $24 for rooster tenders on the U.S. Open.
St. Francis was hampered additional by being short-handed, partially as a result of some gamers had been unable to cancel journey plans they’d made when a visit to the event appeared unlikely. Foix Sotos, for instance, performed fourth singles, reasonably than his regular sixth. And Davis additionally needed to miss the match with a well being downside.
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 last season was achieved.
St. Francis was one of many smallest colleges with Division I athletics.
The lads’s basketball group was one in all simply 4 unique members of Division I by no means to make the N.C.A.A. event. However the males’s water polo group made a number of Last 4 journeys, most lately in 2013, and the town skyline backdrop to its soccer video games in Brooklyn Bridge Park often made visiting gamers clamor for selfies.
The lads’s and girls’s observe groups are the final nonetheless going, however in a number of weeks their last seasons, too, might be over.
St. Francis has stated it is going to honor the athletic scholarships of the gamers with eligibility remaining. “A few of the older gamers are planning to remain in New York,” stated Foix Sotos, whose personal eligibility is exhausted. “They’ve a life right here, they usually don’t need to switch for just one 12 months. However for the freshmen and the sophomores, all of them need to switch; they’re on the lookout for colleges.”
Athletic officers stated they had been getting résumés collectively. Does Davis have any plans after 20 years on the faculty? “For the time being, no I don’t.”
When the match was over on Friday, the group 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 stated.
“My final school match,” he stated of the sudden go to to the event. “Immediately was like a reward for me.”