Ota And Spangler Both Earn Major Awards To Highlight Goucher's Landmark Conference Men's Tennis Honors

May 9, 2019

BALTIMORE, Md. – Tetsuya Ota (Wesley Chapel, Fla./Saddlebrook Prep) has been named the Landmark Conference Player of the Year announced by the league on Thursday. First-year head coach Eric Spangler was tabbed as the conference Coach of the Year.

Ota also earned a spot on the All-Landmark Conference first team while Slade Dumas (Great Falls, Va./Dominion) has been named to the second team as a singles play and also with his doubles partner Omosesan Adebamgbe (Philadelphia, Pa./Lower Merion).

Ota has now earned a major award for the second-straight season after garnering Landmark Conference Rookie of the Week honors last season. The sophomore also picked up his second all-conference first-team recognition in his two seasons at Goucher. He also has been named the circuit Player of the Week three times in 2018-19 and four times in his career and was tabbed as the Most Valuable Player in last year's conference championships.

Ota becomes the third player in program history to earn Landmark Conference Player of the Year honors, joining former teammate Jack Hodges (2018) and Joey Caracappa (2016) while he is the fourth Goucher player to earn a league's top honor. Chris Akin was named the Capital Athletic Conference Player of the Year in 1991.

Ota is 14-6 on the year and only lost eight games in seven matches in league play at No. 1 singles this season. The sophomore won his doubles match with Michael Herman (Prague, Czech Republic/Gymnazium Nova Porg) 8-2 and his singles match 6-0, 6-0 at No. 1 singles in the semifinals 5-0 win against Susquehanna University on April 30 and then hit a return at 30-40 in his doubles match with Herman to earn an 8-6 win against the University of Scranton to give the Gophers a 2-1 edge after doubles on the way to a 5-1 victory in the championship game on Saturday.

Spangler took over the team in January and guided Goucher to 16-5 overall record and 7-0 in league play while helping the team to its fourth-straight Landmark Conference championship. The squad won 12 straight from March 8-April 13 including a pair victories against fellow NCAA Division III Championship teams. The squad won 15 of its final 17 matches going into the national stage. He had Ota and Dumas combine for four Landmark Conference Player of the Week awards and now in his one season at Goucher has coached a Landmark Conference Player of the Year, a conference first-team singles selection, a second-team singles player and a second-team doubles team.

Dumas earns his first all-conference selection after playing every spot in the lineup except for No. 6 singles and is 17-7 on the year including 7-0 in league play. The junior only allowed four games in conference matches this year and is 15-1 in his last 16 matches. He posted three wins in the Landmark Conference Championships with two doubles wins and a singles victory against Scranton to earn Most Valuable Player honors for the tournament. During spring break, Dumas went 4-0 in singles play and 4-0 in both singles and doubles including wins against Grinnell College and Stevens Institute of Technology, two teams that are in the 2019 NCAA Championships.

Dumas also received recognition for doubles with Adebamgbe and Dumas have records at No. 2 and No. 3 doubles and are 15-1 together including 6-0 in league play.