Kenosha, Wis. -- The Thunder men's tennis team may not have a traditional match on its schedule until early 2026, but the new season began all the same this weekend as Wheaton sent its entire roster up to Carthage College to take part in the CCIW Fall Individual Championships for the first time in program history. Friday and Saturday's conference-wide competition was formatted through singles and doubles bracket flights with one player or program eventually being crowned champion for each flight upon successfully avoiding elimination through all three rounds of play. Wheaton had two individual runners-up this weekend, as freshman Elliot Mathew and junior Andrew Jang placed second in their respective brackets to lead the Thunder in their inaugural appearance at the showcase event.

All ten players on this year's roster participated in the doubles section of the championships this weekend. Jang and Andrew Winters lost their first round match but bounced back with consecutive 8-6 wins over duos from Carroll to place fifth in the first doubles flight. The pairings of Toby Schmidt and Ryder Ward and Joshua Hartman and Corin Tang each had the same results and met each other in the fifth-place match of the second doubles bracket. Schmidt and Ward claimed victory in the competitive 7-5 intrasquad contest and joined Jang and Winters on earning a fifth-place standing. Wheaton saw its two doubles teams in the third flight finish fourth and fifth. Collin Brantly and Sam Schutz teamed up to defeat a Carroll pairing in the first round before falling to teams from Carthage and North Central to end up in fourth place. David Hill and Mathew emulated Jang and Winters and knocked off consecutive opponents from Carroll via match scores of 8-5 and 8-2 to seal a fifth-place finish in the final bracket flight.

.Jang (pictured on story cover image) started his singles flight with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over a North Central competitor and downed the subsequent Carthage challenger, 6-3, 7-5, to book his spot in the championship match, where he fell 7-5, 7-6 to his North Central rival. Mathew had a strong debut performance for Wheaton this weekend as the rookie kicked things off with a lopsided 6-0, 6-2 victory over an Illinois Wesleyan competitor before notching another straight-set success against a Carthage player in the second round. The rookie then fell in flight six's title match to the eventual champion from Carthage. Schutz placed fifth in the same bracket following tiebreaker wins against players from Illinois Wesleyan and Carroll.

Schmidt earned a hard-fought result over a North Central player in the first round of the flight four bracket before dropping the next round's contest to the soon-to-be champion from Carthage. But the sophomore (pictured left) still got to end his weekend on a positive note, as he overpowered a Carthage counterpart in two frames to claim the bronze medal for his bracket. Ward, Winters, and Tang finished eighth, seventh, and sixth, respectively, in their solo flights this weekend. Hartman won his first singles duel over a Carthage player before falling in his next two matches to place fourth in flight five. Fellow freshman Brantly was seventh place in the same bracket.

The next event on Wheaton's 2025-26 schedule is the ITA Regional Championships in Kalamazoo in three weeks' time.