AMHERST, N.Y. -- Daemen University tennis coach Richard Greco was named the 2024 East Coast Conference Men's Tennis Coach of the Year, the league announced in the postseason awards release on Thursday afternoon. Greco was named Coach of the Year following a vote of the league's four head coaches, and is the first Daemen coach in program history to earn the award.
Greco's Wildcats are headed back to the ECC Championship Tournament for the fourth straight season and he helped lead Daemen to three shutout victories this season, topping Nazareth 9-0 on Sept. 28 and beating Puerto Rico-Mayaguez and Saint Vincent in a pair of 7-0 wins on March 13 and March 16 on Daemen's spring break road trip down in Orlando, Florida. The Wildcats also picked up close victories in the spring, beating Bloomsburg 4-3 in the spring opener on Feb. 17 and beating Millennia Atlantic 4-3 on March 11 in the first of Daemen's four matches in Florida.
In his third season at the helm of the Daemen men's and women's tennis teams, Greco has continued to build up the men's program by expanding the reach of the recruiting classes, bringing in five new starters to the team over the last two seasons. The Wildcats brought in three international players this season who all made an immediate impact on the team, with junior transfer
Juan Alvarez (Puebla, Mexico) and freshman
Lasse Mergens (Bochum, Germany) each finishing the regular season with six singles victories, and freshman
Lucas Garcia (Bogota, Columbia) who tallied four singles wins and three doubles wins this season. Alvarez earned four singles victories at No. 2 singles and teamed up with sophomore
Alex Lumanog (Albuquerque, N.M.) in No. 1 doubles play where they won a team-high five doubles victories on the year.
Greco's Wildcats will play in the 2024 ECC Tournament on Friday morning as the No. 4 seed where they will face No. 1 Queens College in the first semifinal match at 8:45 AM in Flushing, N.Y. at the Queens Tennis Center.
Daemen University features the premier NCAA Division II athletics program in the Buffalo-Niagara region, sponsoring 17 intercollegiate teams. For the latest information on Daemen Athletics, follow the Wildcats via social media on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, or sign up to receive customizable news alerts, e-mail newsletters and weekly schedule alerts.
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