WILKES-BARRE, PA – Meet Jason Mifsud, MAC Champion.
Cementing a resume that stands as one of, if not the, best in the history of Lycoming College men’s tennis, the 5-11, 170-pound senior finished off a torrid fall by doing something no one in the history of the program ever has – win a Middle Atlantic Conference Individual Championship.
The top-seed in the top flight, the Montoursville Area grad made quick work of a pair of opponents on Sunday, Oct. 14 to clinch the title at Kirby Park on an unusually sunny and warm fall day, the perfect way to celebrate the conference’s 100th year.
“Jason’s been prepared for this weekend,” Lycoming’s third-year head coach LeRoy Baer said. “He has worked extremely hard for this. He played in tournaments all summer and played in a USTA league. He put a lot of hard work in.”
“I was stoked. I don’t show that much emotion on the court, but after that one, I threw my hands up in the air,” Mifsud said. “It was a lot of weight off. I usually don’t like to be seeded No. 1 because it’s added pressure, but to win it for Coach Baer was really nice.”
In the semifinals, Mifsud dismissed Elizabethtown’s Eric Fritzges, 6-4, 6-2, and then he avenged a loss to Wilkes’ Steve Wilson in the quarterfinals of the 2011 MAC individuals in the championship match, cruising to a 6-4, 6-1 win.
“Meeting the kids he did during this journey, against E-town’s Fritzges and Wilkes’ Wilson, he was just excited about his play, period,” Baer said. “Jason was not missing. He broke Steve twice in the first set and that led to the victory. Then with the score, 4-1 in the second set, he broke him and got to serve for the match. He pulled it off. It was fantastic to watch.”
“The first match against Fritzges, I hadn’t played him since his freshman year, but I remember he was a big hitter,” Mifsud said. “I woke up groggy and got out to a slow start, but I started to wake up and got it done. In the finals, against Wilson, I knew I had to put balls into his backhand and force him to use that. It went really well.”
The wins wrap up a fall in which Mifsud went 7-1, including picking up two wins at the ITA Southeast Regionals B-2 flight, where he was the first Warrior in school history to reach the semifinals of a flight at the tournament in school history.
“That really prepared him,” Baer said of the ITA Regionals. “That level of competition – going against players from Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins, seeing that competition and seeing those guys in the two brackets above him, I think that gave him a boost of confidence that was intangible.”
With a 37-11 career record, Mifsud’s resume already includes a school-record number of singles wins, two First Team All-Commonwealth Conference honors, one second-team all-conference accolade, three ITA Scholar-Athlete nods and two MAC Academic Honor Roll selections. He also has reached the finals of the third singles flight at the MAC individuals twice in his career and he has also won three career Commonwealth Conference Player of the Week awards.
As a freshman, Mifsud helped lead the Warriors to the 2010 Commonwealth Conference team title, as the team finished 10-3.
Mifsud and the Warriors have now concluded the fall portion of their season and they will get back in action in the spring, starting with a match against Juniata on Monday, March 25 at 3:30 p.m. at Bruce Henry Park.
