FARMVILLE, Va. – On the strength of his third consecutive 20-win singles campaign, Longwood junior ace Blasco raked in All-Big South first-team singles and first-team doubles honors to spearhead a historic postseason awards coups for Longwood men's tennis.
Blasco earned All-Big South honors in both singles and doubles for the third consecutive year, becoming only the ninth player in conference history to thrice earn spots in both of those two all-conference lineups. He and Longwood doubles partner
Guilherme Sergio both appeared on the 2019 All-Big South first-team singles and doubles lineup, while freshman teammate
Guillermo Cagigas also earned All-Big South second-team singles recognition.
The five All-Big South awards shared between those three Lancers mark the second consecutive year that Longwood has received a program-record five all-conference honors and the second consecutive year that three different Lancers appeared on the all-conference singles lineup. Sophomore
Raisei Sakai also collected Big South All-Academic Team honors for the first such award of his Lancer career.
Those awards follow another strong regular season for the Lancers under second-year head coach and Longwood director of tennis
Jhonnatan Medina Alvarez, who has led Longwood to a 13-8 record and the No. 6 overall seed heading into this weekend's Big South Championship.
Blasco is the first Lancer to earn three All-Big South singles honors and three All-Big South doubles honors, adding more accolades to a decorated career that has him atop Longwood's all-time lists for singles winning percentage (.811), Big South singles wins (15), Big South singles winning percentage (.714), doubles wins (61), doubles winning percentage (.735), Big South doubles wins (12) and Big South doubles winning percentage (.600).
After amassing a 23-4 singles and 19-5 doubles record at the top of Longwood's lineup this season, Blasco ranks among the Big South's top two in overall wins, wins at No. 1 singles, doubles wins and wins at No. 1 doubles. The former Big South Freshman of the Year went 5-2 in Big South singles play and 4-2 in Big South doubles alongside Sergio.
Sergio, meanwhile, made an immediate impact in his first season as a Lancer, posting a 20-5 mark in singles and a 17-7 record in doubles play, doing so while playing the bulk of those matches in Longwood's top two spots. He lost just two matches the entire spring and went 17-2 at the No. 2 slot and 1-0 at both No. 1 and No. 3 singles. He enters the Big South Championship on a stretch of five consecutive wins and a 9-1 record over his past 10 matches and finished the regular season as the conference leader in both wins and winning percentage (.895) at the No. 2 singles slot.
Sergio was equally impactful in doubles play, going 13-5 in the spring with a 12-4 mark at the No. 1 slot. He and Blasco paired up for 15 bouts this spring and went 12-3 in those, all at the No. 1 spot, and finished the regular season on a five-match win streak.
The lone freshmen on Longwood's roster, Cagigas joined his sophomore counterpart Sergio in providing an instant boost to Longwood's roster in year one. Stepping in as the mid-tier anchor of Longwood's singles roster, he amassed a 17-8 record in his inaugural season with an 8-5 mark at No. 3 and a 7-0 performance at No. 4. That 7-0 mark at No. 4 was the best of all Big South players at that slot, while his 8-5 mark at No. 3 ranked him fifth among his Big South counterparts in winning percentage at that position.
Cagigas was dominant in the final two months of the regular season, posting a 10-3 mark from the start of March and ending the year with a 7-1 record in his final 10 singles bouts. He is the first Lancer to earn All-Big South honors as a freshman since Blasco was named Big South Freshman of the Year and All-Big South first team singles and doubles in 2017.
Sakai played a supporting role in the middle of Longwood's lineups this season as well, posting a 12-11 mark in singles play at the Nos. 3-5 spots and an 11-10 doubles record earned throughout that rotation.
Blasco, Cagigas, Sakai and Sergio will lead No. 6 seed Longwood into the 2019 Big South Championship tournament this Thursday, April 18, against No. 3 seed UNC Asheville at the Radford Tennis Courts. That opener will begin at 12 p.m., and a win would send Longwood back to the Big South semifinals for a second straight year where they would square off against the winner of No. 2 seed Campbell and No. 7 seed Winthrop.
2019 Big South Conference Men's Tennis Award Winners
First Team All-Conference Singles
Henry Patten, Sr., UNC Asheville
Maximilian Scholl, Sr., Gardner-Webb
►
Amadeo Blasco, Jr., Longwood
Diego Quiroz, Sr., Winthrop
►
Guilherme Sergio, Soph., Longwood
Millen Hurrion, Soph., Gardner-Webb
Dustin Werner, Sr., Campbell
Maxwell Benson, Fr., Presbyterian College
First Team All-Conference Doubles
Maximilian Scholl/Millen Hurrion, Gardner-Webb
►
Amadeo Blasco/
Guilherme Sergio, Longwood
Henry Patten/Oli Nolan, UNC Asheville
Dustin Werner/Raphael Calzi, Campbell
Second Team All-Conference Singles
Bastien Huon, Jr., Campbell
Oli Nolan, Soph., UNC Asheville
Oscar Alvarez, Fr., Presbyterian College
Ankush Arora, Sr., USC Upstate
Charlie Morkel, Soph., UNC Asheville
►
Guillermo Cagigas, Fr., Longwood
Alexandros Caldwell, Sr., Radford
Leo Bierbaum, Fr., UNC Asheville
Second Team All-Conference Doubles
Daniel Stenger/Oscar Alvarez, Presbyterian College
Ankush Arora/Fernando Bernardes, USC Upstate
Rodrigo Magalhaes/Yevhen Sirous, Radford
Bastien Huon/Ondrej Labik, Campbell
All-Academic Team
Dustin Werner, Sr., Campbell
Maximilian Scholl, Sr., Gardner-Webb
Charles Hudson, Sr., Hampton
►
Raisei Sakai, Soph., Longwood
Daniel Stenger, Soph., Presbyterian College
Alexandros Caldwell, Sr., Radford
Henry Patten, Sr., UNC Asheville
Ankush Arora, Sr., USC Upstate
Gabriel Dias, Jr., Winthrop
Player of the Year
Henry Patten, Sr., UNC Asheville
Freshman of the Year
Maxwell Benson, Presbyterian College
Coach of the Year
Mike Griffith, Gardner-Webb
Scholar-Athlete of the Year
Dustin Werner, Sr., Campbell
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