The Case Western Reserve University men's tennis team, ranked fifth in Division III, will get its 2026 spring season underway this week, as the team heads to Indiana for four matches on Friday.
The Spartans will be looking to continue the most successful stretch by any team in the history of CWRU athletics, after the squad reached the NCAA Division III Championship match for the fourth time in five years and won the second University Athletic Association Championship in program history in 2025. CWRU has gone 146-23 in dual matches over the last six seasons, good for a .864 winning percentage.
The team's success continued into the fall of 2025, with the group combining to go 120-52 (.698) in singles matches and 46-27 (.630) in doubles contests across several tournament-style events. The highlight of the fall was the ITA Regional Championship, where junior George Kosseifi reached the semifinals of the singles draw, while sophomore Jon Totorica made it to the quarterfinals, and the duo of graduate student Bryce Ware and junior Trey Lambright made a run to the semifinals of the doubles draw.
The Spartans will enter the spring ranked fifth nationally, while Ware and Lambright are ranked 17th nationally and fourth in the Central Region in doubles. In the singles rankings, Kosseifi is 22nd nationally and sixth regionally, Totorica is 36th nationally and 10th regionally, and senior Matthew Plunkett is ranked 15th in the region.
While Kosseifi is slated to miss the spring season, the Spartans will benefit from the addition of graduate student Ansh Shah, who has secured All-America honors over his career and will look to regain his form after missing all of last spring and fall. Three other players from last year's NCAA Championship singles lineup are slated to return for CWRU, including senior Anmay Devaraj, Plunkett, and junior Santiago Salazar Garza (who went 8-2 in singles play in the fall). Several other players stood out in singles matches in the fall, including Totorica (8-3), senior Josh Davydov (9-1), and sophomore Rohit Jain (7-0).
Meanwhile, CWRU has two established pairings in its doubles lineup in Ware and Lambright, and Totorica and sophomore Leon Chen (who went 6-2 together in the fall after going 18-6 last year). Devaraj is a likely candidate to fill one of the spots in the final doubles pairing after earning All-America honors as a doubles player last year.
CWRU will begin its spring schedule on Friday with four matches in Indiana against Anderson, Rose-Hulman, DePauw, and Wabash, before taking on Kalamazoo, Allegheny, Lake Forest, and Rochester next weekend. CWRU will then turn its attention to the ITA Indoor Championship in St. Peter, Minnesota, where the Spartans will be the third-seeded team and open play against sixth-seeded and 11th-ranked Johns Hopkins on February 20.
After a pair of matches against Wayne State and Grand Valley State, CWRU will head off for its annual spring break trip, splitting the team between Texas and Florida. The Texas group is slated to face four nationally-ranked teams in #14 Trinity, #16 WashU, #37 Southwestern, and #8 Swarthmore. The Spartans will then return from spring break to wrap up its regular season schedule with six more matches, five of which are against nationally-ranked opponents - #6 Emory (March 28), #13 Kenyon (April 4), #1 Denison (April 10), #2 Chicago (April 11), and #18 Carnegie Mellon (April 18).
CWRU will compete at the UAA Championship in Altamonte Springs, Florida, from April 23 through April 25, as the team will be in search of its second-straight conference title and third overall in program history. The Spartans will be aiming to qualify for the NCAA Division III Championship for the sixth-straight year and ninth time in program history, with the first three rounds being held at campus sites from May 8 - 10.
The NCAA Championship will be held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, from May 19 - 26, as CWRU will be looking to reach the team final site for the sixth-consecutive year.
