DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The Embry-Riddle men's tennis team won both the singles and doubles titles at the 2014 USTA/ITA Regional tournament, Sunday at the Crotty Tennis Complex.
 
Doubles play featured the top two seeds in the bracket in No. 1 Deni Zmak and Jaime Sanchez-Canamares Rios from Embry-Riddle and No. 2 Alvaro Itiurraga and Nicolas Guershanik of Northwood. In the first set, the ERAU team managed to hold off their opponents 7-5. An even more closely contested second set resulted in a 7-6 (7-4 in the tiebreaker) decision in favor of the Seahawks, leaving it up to a 10-point tie-breaking third set to decide the title.
 
Neither side was able to gain much of an advantage in the early stages of the set, leading to a 6-6 tie. With score knotted, Northwood double-faulted and that slight miscue swung the momentum in favor of the Eagles, who rattled off four unanswered points to take the regional title.
 
An hour later, the top-seeded Zmak and the second-seeded Sanchez-Canamares took the court once again, this time on opposite sides of the net in the singles finale. Sanchez-Canamares took the first set 6-3, but Zmak, the 2013 regional and national champion, rebounded to take the second set 6-3 and earned his second consecutive regional title with a 6-2 win in the third.
 
With their victories, Zmak and Sanchez-Canamares have secured berths in the USTA/ITA Small College Championships held October 9-12 at the Palmetto Tennis Center in Sumter, South Carolina.
 
Zmak will be making his second straight trip to the ITA national event. In 2013, the junior became only the second player in ERAU history, following in the footsteps of his fellow countryman Mislav Hizak, to win the ITA/NAIA singles and doubles titles in the same year. Zmak holds the distinction of being the only ERAU tennis player to win the ITA Super Bowl title in both singles and doubles.