Gustavus Adolphus College

The Gustavus men’s tennis team had a successful first day at the Drake Invitational on Friday. Two of the three Gustavus doubles teams went undefeated on the day as Tyler Johnson and Amrik Donkena went 2-0, while Patrick Clark and Niko Karnop went 3-0. The two teams will now meet in the semifinals on Saturday. The Gusties are the only Division III team in the tournament.

Johnson and Donkena received a bye in the first round and then defeated Jameson Goetz and Dan Tully of South Dakota State — 8-2 in the second round and James McKie and Guilherme Marsiglia of Drake, 9-8 (7-3) in the quarterfinals.

Clark and Karnop defeated Bryan Lube and Connor Macey of Creighton, 8-6 in the first round and then knocked off Jamie Dash and Dominic Rossetto of South Dakota State, 8-3 in the second round. They wrapped up the day with an impressive win over Jonathan Hadash and Brendan Ruddock of the Univeristy of Minnesota by the score of 8-6.

Johnson and Donkena will now face Clark and Karnop in the semifinals of the doubles draw on Saturday.

Kryshan Jethwa and Kyle Olson also participated in the doubles draw. They lost their first round match to Ryan Drake and Sergey Dulin of Drake by the score of 8-5.

The singles draw will be played on Saturday morning and the doubles semifinals will take place on Saturday afternoon. The tournament will wrap up on Sunday.

The teams participating along with Gustavus in the tournament include host Drake University (Division I), the University of Minnesota (Division I), South Dakota State University (Division I), Creighton (Division I), Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (Division II), and Northern Colorado University (Division I).