Doubles duo heads to the Big Apple from uiargonaut.com on Vimeo.
Just as Idaho senior Marius Cirstea predicted earlier this fall, he and doubles partner Abid Akbar have made it to the Indoor National Championships in Flushing Meadows, New York.
“I know what I can play, I know what Abid can play and I kind of saw what the level was last year, so I knew if we played a certain way we could win regionals,” Cirstea said.
Cirstea had a chance to experience the high-level tournament last year when he and Andrew Dobbs earned a spot by winning the Mountain Region Tournament. Since then, he has had plans to go back, and some of that confidence rubbed off on Akbar.
“He always told me, every time we played he would say it was the road to New York,” Akbar said. “He would say, ‘let’s play hard and keep focused and we can win it’.”
Idaho Director of Tennis Jeff Beaman said last year’s pairing was a great doubles team that clicked well and had a great run to make it to the finals, while shocking a number of doubles pairs in the process. He said this year Cirstea and Akbar were paired together based on their strengths and with the plan of winning regionals and going to nationals.
The plan worked, and now it’s time to see how well they can do against the top programs in the nation. The tournament is full of ranked players and teams, including the four top seeds from Auburn, Duke, Virginia and Oklahoma.
While many of the top teams have a first round bye, Cirstea and Akbar will have to fight their way through the Round of 32 Thursday when they meet brothers Ben and Riki McLachlan from the University of California-Berkeley. If they advance to the Round of 16, they will meet Vikram Hundal and Juan Spir from Georgia Tech the same day. Hundal and Spir have a first round bye.
From there, they would play in the quarterfinals on Friday, semis on Saturday and finals on Sunday. Advancing this far will likely mean having to beat at least one of the top four ranked doubles teams in the nation. Last year they may have seemed like a long shot, and they are underdogs this year, too, but teams are sure to recognize Idaho and its top player Cirstea a little more this time around.
“I think they will definitely know that we were there last year. They will be familiar with Marius, he has had a singles rank and a doubles rank since then,” Beaman said.
He said the duo’s performance at Baylor, narrowly losing 9-8 to the team that went on to win the tournament, will make them a team that others definitely won’t want to face.
Each year there are approximately 1,500 players competing for a spot at nationals. Cirstea said being part of the only two Idaho pairings in history to reach this tournament makes him very proud.
“I am happy I delivered because people expect that of me since I have played No. 1 for a couple years now,” Cirstea said. “I have a good scholarship so I had to deliver, and I am glad I did.”
Both players agree that none of this would have been possible without the help of their coach. Akbar said neither he nor Cirstea were this good when they came to Idaho, and Beaman has devoted a lot of time into improving them as players.
“He saw that we could be good at doubles and that if he worked on us with the right things we could get there — it was his vision and his hard work and Marius and I kept working hard as well,” Akbar said.
Just getting to nationals is huge for this program, but picking up a couple of wins would really ice the cake. Beaman said those wins are the next step for Idaho.
“We had going to nationals as a goal, going to back to nationals with the team that we put together was another goal and part of that goal is going there and actually winning a match against a big program,” Beaman said.
Charles Crowley can be reached at [email protected]