St. Louis, Mo. -- For the second year running, the Wheaton men's tennis program sent a handful of its players to take part in the ITA Division III Central Regional Championships. This year's tournament is being hosted by Washington University (Mo.), and it represents the only event on the fall calendar for the Thunder men's tennis team before the 2025 season officially gets underway in February. Tim Steiner and Jacob Williams competed in the regional championships again just as they did in 2023, while Corin Tang and Evan Walther got their first ITA Regional experience this weekend.

Steiner and Williams gave a good account of themselves in the doubles competition, winning two matches yesterday and advancing to the Round of 16 amid a strong and competitive field. The senior duo topped their College of Wooster first-round opponents by a score of 8-4 on Friday morning before upsetting the ninth-seeded pair from Denison University at an 8-5 line in the Round of 32. This result took Steiner and Williams one stage further than they managed to reach as a doubles pair at last year's tournament in Kalamazoo. The veteran combo fell to the fourth-seeded team from North Central this morning to end their stay in the doubles bracket.

Tang and Walther also took part in the doubles competition yesterday and were eliminated from the main draw at the first stage by their fifth-seeded University of Chicago opponents. Doubles teams who dropped their first-round matches got a second chance to play by moving into the consolation bracket, but a duo from Baldwin Wallace University prevented Tang and Walther from making a run in this side of the draw.

Steiner enjoyed a perfect slate of results on the tournament's opening day, as he took down his Round of 64 singles opponent from Greenville University in straight sets at 6-4, 7-6 [10-8] to book a place in the Round of 32 this afternoon. Seeded 17th in the men's singles competition, the Fort Wayne-native took on a 13th-seeded player from Kenyon College in the R32 and was topped in two sets to conclude his weekend run.

Williams matched his singles showing at the regional championships last year this weekend by capturing his first-round fixture before exiting in the Round of 64. The Wheaton local defeated a fellow CCIW rival from Millikin, 7-6, 6-3, in the opening stage but lost to a seeded opponent from Denison yesterday afternoon.

Walther's singles journey followed the same trajectory, as the sophomore topped his Earlham College counterpart, 7-6, 6-2, to advance to the Round of 64 on Friday afternoon before also falling to a talented Denison player at the second hurdle.

Tang got to play in the singles competition on both Friday and Saturday by virtue of dropping into the consolation draw after his first-round loss yesterday. Having been knocked off by a DePauw University competitor, Tang faced off against an Earlham rival this afternoon and won their single-set battle 8-5 to book a place in the consolation Round of 16. The junior from Ann Arbor played a hard-fought contest against his Millikin counterpart this afternoon but eventually fell by a narrow 8-6 margin to bow out of the competition.

After gaining some valuable experience and impressive results in St. Louis this weekend, Steiner, Tang, Walther, and Williams will rejoin the rest of their Thunder teammates in the preseason routine and work towards Wheaton's first match of the new campaign, which does not arrive until February 1st when the Thunder host MSOE for a non-conference match in Hanover Park.