Robbins’ run continues, advances to finals in Texas

Robbins' run continues, advances to finals in Texas
Adam Gore/LetsGoICC.com

PLANO, TX – It took an extra day to get there, but Mark Robbins advanced to the NJCAA championship match of the No. 5 singles consolation bracket with a pair of wins on Thursday.

Robbins marched past Javier De Claire of Marion Military Institute (AL) 8-1 at the Eagles Landing Tennis Center at Allen (TX) High School in his first match of the day.

"Today was some of the best tennis I've seen Mark play all season," said Coach Paul Johnson. "He played really smart in his first match and forced his opponent into a lot of errors to get him frustrated and out of his game."

He then battled his way into Friday's finale with an 8-4 win over Dave Romeo of New Mexico Military Institute at host site Collin College.

"Mark was able to recognize this guy's weakness early on in the match and kept going after it," said Johnson. "When he got him on the ropes he picked his game up and got a lot more aggressive to pull away late in the match."

Robbins will face Dalton Hendrix of Spartanburg Community College (SC) for the flight's consolation championship Friday at 8:00 a.m.

"We were hoping to play the match today, but it's too much to ask either of these guys to play three matches in such a short amount of time considering the weather conditions," said Johnson.

The Indians entered the day holding strong at 13th with 12 points while ASA College (NY) held a slim advantage over Tyler Junior College (TX) and Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (GA) for the top spot in the chase for the 2015 national title.

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