Box Score MADISON, N.J. — Junior captain Nico Teynie (Rouen, France/Lycée Val de Seine) of the New Jersey City University men's tennis team had a weekend for the Gothic Knight history books. The native of France competed in three days of stiff singles competition at the 2022 Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Division III Northeast Regional Championships against some of the best players in the nation. Despite the level of play, Teynie reeled off five straight victories and pushed Championship Match opponent — the #9-ranked player in the nation — to the brink in three sets before finishing as the runner-up (second out of 64) on Sunday, Oct. 2.

The tournament was hosted from Friday, Sept. 30-Sunday, Oct. 2, on the campus of Drew University. Teynie blew through his first two opponents on Friday in Rounds 1 and 2, dropping just four games over four sets to advance to the Round of 16 on Saturday. There, he won a three-set battle over his opponent from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) but made it through to the quarterfinal and took down his foe in straight sets, dropping just three games.

All that work pushed him through to Sunday's semifinal match against yet another RPI opponent. There, Teynie faced off against Abraham Yohannes and won the first set, 7-6, following an 11-point tiebreak to take the early one-set lead. Yohannes fired back to win the second set 6-1 and even up the match. In the decisive third set, Teynie hunkered down and forced yet another tiebreak, this time of the seven-point variety, and again won 7-6 to clinch a berth into the ITA Regional Championship match.

Teynie faced off here against — you guessed it — yet another representative of a RPI program that ended the 2021-22 season ranked #22 in all of Division III and #7 in the Northeast Region. His opponent was 2022 NCAA Division III Men's Tennis Championship qualifier Aiden Drover-Mattinen, who closed out last season ranked #9 in all of Division III and #3 in the Northeast in the final ITA Division III polls.

Despite all the clout that his opponent came to the court with, the Green and Gold's best — Teynie is a two-time First Team All-New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) selection at singles and doubles, the 2021 NJAC Rookie of the Year, the 2021 NJCU Male Newcomer of the Year and the 2022 NJCU Male Most Outstanding Athlete of the Year — stopped his opponent in the first set with a hard-fought 7-5 win to take the early 1-0 lead.

Unfortunately, Drover-Mattinen — he also claimed the ITA Regional doubles championship today, paired with one of Teynie's other opponents — who, previous to his first set in this one, had lost just 13 games and swept each of his five other opponents leading into the title clash, evened up the match at 1-1 following a second-set 6-4 win. The RPI Engineer closed it out with 6-2 win in the third and Teynie officially finished the weekend as the Northeast Runner-Up.

Up Next:
Despite not winning the Regional Title, Teynie claims the official designation of "finalist," which also secures him a spot in the ITA Cup, which will be hosted by Berry College at the Rome Tennis Center in Rome, Ga., from Thursday-Sunday, Oct. 12-15. Previously known as the Small College Nationals, the tournament dates back to 1986.