Flames Tennis to Face No. 22 Virginia (Away) and Elon (Home) to Open 2021 Season
1/15/2021 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Live Video: Liberty at No. 22 Virginia
Live Scoring: Liberty at No. 22 Virginia
Live Scoring: Liberty vs. Elon
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The Liberty Flames men's tennis squad will open its spring 2021 season with matches on Sunday and Monday.
The Flames will first head to Charlottesville, Va., for a showdown against the No. 22 Virginia Cavaliers, Sunday afternoon. First serve is pegged for 1 p.m. at Boar's Head Sports Club. On Monday, Liberty will host the Elon Phoenix at 3 p.m. at Crosswhite Athletic Club in Lynchburg.
This marks the fourth straight year the Flames will open their season against an ACC opponent. Liberty squared off with Virginia Tech to open the 2018 campaign and Miami in both 2019 and 2020.
Liberty and Virginia last met on March 7, 2020. The No. 38 Cavaliers edged the Flames 4-3 at the Sheridan Snyder Tennis Center in Charlottesville and hold a 9-0 edge in the all-time series.
The Flames and Phoenix also met a season ago, with Liberty sweeping Elon 7-0 on Feb. 28, 2020 at Crosswhite Athletic Club. The victory was the Flames' first-ever 7-0 triumph over Elon. The Phoenix have been victorious in 10 out of 13 all-time meetings with the Flames.
Attendance
Due to health and safety considerations, in addition to the current guidelines for sports venues set by the Commonwealth of Virginia, attendance for the Liberty-Virginia match at Boar's Head Sports Club will be limited to the family of student-athletes and coaching staff.
Virginia Athletics will provide live video and live scoring for the match. Both links can be found on the schedule page of LibertyFlames/com/menstennis.
Liberty's indoor matches at Crosswhite Athletic Club will be closed to the public, this spring. Attendance will be limited to teams, officials, athletic training staffs and personnel essential to hosting the event. Fans are encouraged to follow live scoring for the match and stay tuned to Liberty Men's Tennis social media accounts for live in-match updates.
Flames News and Notes
• The Flames' roster features one junior (Nicaise Muamba), four sophomores (Zion Heaven, Steve Mundt, Josh Wilson and Christiaan Worst) and four freshmen (Goncalo Ferreira, Thando Longwe-Smit, Rafael Marques Da Silva and Deji Thomas-Smith). Please note that Liberty's listed eligibility is based on spring sports student-athletes retaining a year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic halting the 2020 season.
• Muamba, the 2019 ASUN Player of the Year, paces all active Liberty players with 43 singles victories. Wilson is third in program history in singles winning percentage (.644, 38-21 record). Wilson also leads all current Flames with 30 career doubles wins.
• Liberty was picked to finish second in the ASUN Conference behind defending champion FGCU in the ASUN Men's Tennis Preseason Coaches Poll.
• The Flames are 15-19 all-time in season openers, including a 5-4 record over the last nine years. Liberty last won a season opener in 2017, a 5-2 triumph over King.
• Liberty finished 8-6 overall in an abbreviated 2020 season. The Flames earned signature victories at Virginia Tech and at Penn State, last season.
• Virginia went 11-4 overall and 2-1 in the ACC in a shortened 2020 campaign. The Cavaliers finished the year as the 35th-ranked team in the country.
• The last Liberty player to be nationally ranked in singles is Nicaise Muamba, who checked in at No. 65 in the country on Sept. 17, 2019. Muamba and Chase Burton were the most recent ranked doubles team for the Flames. The duo was ranked No. 61 in the country on March 5, 2019.
• The Cavaliers boast a pair of ranked singles players in the preseason Top 125 in No. 29 Carl Soderlund and No. 105T Jeffrey Von Der Schulenburg. Soderlund and Matthew Lord are the No. 35 doubles team in the nation in the preseason rankings.
