Julian Gordy, Jack Katzman Win National Awards from Intercollegiate Tennis Association
KALAMAZOO, Mich. - Senior Julian Gordy earned the ITA Arthur Ashe Leadership and Sportsmanship Award and Jack Katzman won the National Player to Watch Award from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association at the ITA's annual awards banquet on Thursday night, which was held in conjunction with the NCAA Division III national championships this week.
The Arthur Ashe Award dates back to 1982, and goes to collegiate tennis players in all divisions who have exhibited outstanding sportsmanship and leadership as well as scholastic, extracurricular and tennis achievements. The Player to Watch Award is given to the nation's top underclassman who has not yet won an ITA Regional or National event.
Gordy is a two-time team captain for the Stags, and helped lead his team to a No. 1 national ranking for the final two months of the season. He has twice earned All-American distinction in doubles, and has helped CMS make four appearances at the NCAA Championships in four years, including two appearances in the national finals. Gordy was honored by the CMS athletic department with the Hank Krieger Award for academic, athletic, and leadership excellence, and he has also led the team's community involvement, helping CMS receive the 2018 ITA Community Service Award. An economics major with a 3.8 GPA, he was recently named to the Google Cloud Academic All-District team and is eligible for Academic All-America honors, which will be announced later this month.
Katzman has had a stellar career with the Stags that is only at its halfway point, reaching the finals of the NCAA Division III Singles Championship a year ago as a freshman. Although he has not yet won an ITA event, he narrowly missed winning three of them this fall, dropping the ITA Grasscourt Championship to the big-serving Grant Urken of Bowdoin, falling short to Chad LeDuff of UC Santa Cruz in the ITA West Region singles final, and having a match point but falling in a third-set tiebreaker to Caltech in the ITA West Region doubles final (with Gordy). His singles record this year is 28-2 (with the losses both coming in the fall to Urken and LeDuff), and he has lost only two sets in singles all spring while compiling a perfect 22-0 dual record.
CMS finished as the national runner-up on Wednesday with a 5-3 defeat to Emory, although Gordy contributed to one point with a doubles win at No. 1 and Katzman won a straight-set decision at No. 2 singles in the losing effort. Both will continue playing on this week, as Gordy will team with Nikolai Parodi as the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Division III Doubles Championship, which gets underway tomorrow, while Katzman will be the No. 5 seed in the NCAA Division III Singles Championship.