The Timberwolves were left hang­ing their tails between their legs as Ferris State University’s men’s ten­nis team took home a GLIAC Championship this past Sunday. Northwood University has taken home 12 straight ten­nis cham­pi­onships; FSU last beat them in 1999.

“It was so sur­real. There are four seniors on our team, and I know how bad they wanted to win this. It was a great moment,” FSU sopho­more ten­nis player Otto Keresztes said after the upset.

The Bulldogs end the year with an impres­sive 16–6 record as they dropped the pre­vi­ously unbeaten 13^th-ranked Northwood University squad in the GLIAC Championship to a 14–1 over­all mark on route to a GLIAC Championship.

The Bulldogs came in ready and got off to a quick start in the dou­bles play as the two and three teams won their matchup. On the sec­ond team dou­bles, Keresztes and Justin Hermes topped NU by the score of 8–3, fol­lowed by Jack Swan and Tyler Marengo’s win­ning per­for­mance by the score of 8–2.

The Bulldogs would not hold the lead for long, as the Timberwolves stormed back with the first three sin­gles matches with wins tak­ing a 4–2 lead, only need­ing one more match to win the title.

With the deficit, every­thing changed when junior Razvan Mag took to the court.

“I’d give a shout out to Razvan Mag. He was down early, and had an amaz­ing come­back and with­out that we wouldn’t have won the title,” Keresztes said.

Mag fell in the first set by a score of 3–6 and then stormed back in the sec­ond set win­ning the match by a score of 6–1. The third set had to be won or Northwood University would claim their 13^th straight title. Mag fell behind to a 2–5 game deficit before catch­ing fire and win­ning four out of the next five to tie it 6–6. In the tiebreaker, the Bulldogs were over­joyed when Mag fin­ished the come­back, win­ning 7–5.

Mag’s excit­ing per­for­mance fueled Ferris State University as Keresztes and Marengo won their sin­gles matches and earned FSU a GLIAC title by the score of 5–4.

The Bulldogs avenged a close 5–4 loss ear­lier in the sea­son to the Timberwolves by bring­ing home the hardware.

Keresztes would go on to say, “We got some medals and a plaque and improved our rank­ing for the tour­na­ment, but it’s not over yet. We start prac­tic­ing again this week for Regionals and look to con­tinue or momen­tum going into next weekend.”

The Bulldogs entered the GLIAC tour­na­ment with the No. 2 seed (Northwood at num­ber one) and defeated Findlay University in the first round by the score of 5–0, and in the sec­ond round defeated Wayne State University by the score of 5–2 and then capped it off with a 5–4 stun­ner over rival Northwood University.

The NCAA Division II tour­na­ment selec­tions were announced April 24 to see who the Bulldogs take on in Regionals. Results were not avail­able at the time of pub­li­ca­tion. Check online at fsu​torch​.com for the update.