From Case Western Reserve University Athletics
Case Western Reserve University junior James Hopper and graduate student Jonathan Powell bested Emory University's Andrew Esses and Nolan Shah in straight sets on Sunday afternoon, 6-4, 6-1, to claim the 2022 NCAA Division III Doubles Championship at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida.
It is the second time in the history of the men's tennis program that a CWRU pairing has won the NCAA Division III Doubles Championship, as Hopper and Powell joined former Spartans Eric Klawitter and CJ Krimbill, who won the title in 2014. They are the first CWRU athletes to win an individual NCAA Division III Championship since Cassandra Laios' title in the discus throw at the 2019 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
The duo became the sixteenth and seventeenth National Champions in the history of CWRU Athletics, while claiming the 19th National Championship in department history.
Hopper and Powell, the second-seeded duo in the doubles draw, won the first three games of the National Championship match against Esses and Shah to take an early lead. The Spartans went on to take leads of 4-1 and 5-2 in the set, before Emory won back-to-back games to pull back within a game, 5-4. However, CWRU broke Esses' serve to win the first set 6-4.
Feeding off the momentum of the first set win, CWRU took control in the second set, winning the first five games to take a commanding lead. After Emory held serve to set the score at 5-1, Powell closed out the match on his serve, giving the Spartans a 6-1 win in the second set and the National Championship.
Hopper and Powell began the day with a dominating performance in the semifinals, needing just an hour and 15 minutes to pick up a 6-1, 6-4 win against Moses Hutchison and Andrew Watson of the University of Mary Washington. The Spartans' duo set the tone from the start, winning the first five matches of the match, en route to taking the first set 6-1. While the second set was closer, Hopper and Powell never trailed, breaking Mary Washington's serve in the opening game and holding their own serves the rest of the way to secure the match win.
The National Championship capped off Powell's career, which will go down as one of the most remarkable in the program's history. After deciding to use an extra year of eligibility as a graduate student, he finished his time as a Spartan with 106 doubles wins, the second-most all-time in CWRU history.
Hopper finished his junior season with a 37-6 doubles record, the most doubles victories in a season in program history, including a 30-6 mark in matches with Powell this year. He improved to 84-9 in doubles play over his career, the sixth-most wins and best winning percentage (.903) in CWRU history.
Sunday's action completed a record-breaking campaign for the CWRU men's tennis team, which set a program-record for wins in a season with a 25-5 final ledger. CWRU became just the 13th program in Division III to reach the National Championship match in back-to-back years, finishing second in the NCAA Team Championships, and claimed the title at the 2022 ITA Indoor National Championship in February.
It also concludes the 2021-22 season for CWRU Athletics as a whole, which ranks as the most successful in the department's history. In addition to the doubles national championship and the runner-up finish in the team tournament for men's tennis, the men's basketball, women's soccer, softball and women's tennis team each reached the round of 16 of the NCAA Championships, while the men's cross country team placed 19th, the women's cross country team 25th, and the women's swimming and diving team 31st. Both softball and baseball won UAA Championships, and men's swimming and diving, men's indoor track & field, women's indoor track & field and men's outdoor track & field each qualified competitors for their respective NCAA Championships.