Sept. 24, 2009

PHILADELPHIA - This weekend, the Saint Joseph's University men's tennis program will host its first Saint Joseph's Invitational at the SJU Tennis Complex at the Maguire Campus. The event, featuring competitors from six different universities, will be held Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27.

Visit Tournament Central for the latest results as well as directions and information about the participating schools.

Student-athletes from Saint Joseph's, Drexel, Maryland, UMBC, Monmouth, and Penn will compete in four singles flights and two doubles flights over the course of the tournament.

Click here to download the draw for the Saint Joseph's Invitational.

Play begins on Friday at 2:00 p.m. with the first round matches in Singles Flights 1 and 2. First round doubles play commences at 3:30 Friday.

Saturday brings the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds in all four singles flights as well as the doubles quarterfinals.

On Sunday, all four singles flights will begin their championship matches at 9:30 a.m. The doubles flights will hold their semifinal and championship matches later in the day on Sunday.

Ten Saint Joseph's players will be in action for the tournament hosts. Jeff Kessler and Matt Prusack will take part in the first flight; Kessler takes on Chris Meyer of UMBC while Prusack faces Laurence Heads of Monmouth. Both matches are slated to begin at 2:00 p.m. on Friday.

In the second flight, Peter Cognetti and Alex Veronis received byes to the quarterfinals and will take the court for the first time on Saturday morning against Monmouth's David Sherwood and Drexel's Manu Bajpal, respectively.

Michael Stauble faces off with Mwali Phiri of UMBC in the quarterfinals of Flight 3 on Saturday, while Nick Tuxen goes head-to-head with Drexel's Jason Savage-Pollock. Flight 4 features Kevin Aquino against Shane Yap of UMBC and a trio of Hawk freshmen in Delfin Bernal, Kristian Broaddus, and Thomas Gates. Bernal will meet Neil Mirchandani of Drexel, Broaddus faces Monmouth's Ben Dashiell, and Gates makes his debut against Alex Barnes, also of Drexel.

In Doubles Flight 1, Prusack and Stauble received a bye to the quarterfinals. Cognetti and Kessler, a successful pairing last season, team up once again to take on a pair from Monmouth. Three SJU duos will compete in Flight 2; Aquino and Veronis, Broaddus and Bernal, and Tuxen and Gates.