Closing the book on the fall season, Binghamton University men’s tennis junior Sven Vloedgraven came up short in his opening match of the ITA National Indoor Championships at Yale on Thursday. Vloedgraven, the ITA Northeast champion, fell in straight sets 6-2, 6-3 to the tournament’s seventh seed and 15th-ranked player in the nation, Stanford University’s Bradley Klahn.

Vloedgraven was able to stay with Klahn through the early parts of each set, as Klahn held a 3-2 lead in the first set and the second set began in a 3-3 tie. In the end, though, the reigning ITA National Rookie of the Year and 2009 Pac-10 singles and doubles champion was just too much for Vloedgraven to handle. After those close starts to each set, Klahn didn’t drop another game on his way to sending Vloedgraven to the consolation bracket.

“Sven played a pretty good match,” said head coach Adam Cohen. “He just played a couple of loose points in each set which cost him some service games. Sven didn’t have much of a chance in Klahn’s service games, he was serving extremely well.”

Vloedgraven was eliminated completely from the tournament on Friday, when he suffered a 6-1, 6-2 loss in the consolation bracket at the hands of the 27th-ranked player in the nation, Baylor University’s Jordan Rux.

“He didn’t serve as well in this match as he did against [Klahn],” said Cohen. “He did have many more return opportunities to break serve, but unfortunately he just couldn’t win the break points. That was the difference in the second set, because he had around five or six break points to get back in the match but it just didn’t happen for him.”

Despite dropping both of his matches in the tournament, simply qualifying to play in the National Indoor championships makes Vloedgraven’s season a success. The exclusive draw contains 10 of the country’s top 20 players and Vloedgraven is the first Binghamton player to ever compete in it. According to Cohen, participating in the tournament was a positive experience overall.

“I think playing guys ranked in the top 15 or 20 shows him what he needs to do to improve,” said Cohen. “Sven is not a very offensive player and his game is more suited for outdoor play than indoors. So by playing in these matches and watching guys while waiting to play, he’s able to see what he can add to his game to make himself an even better indoor player.”

Based on the quality wins he earned on the way to a 13-5 record for the fall season, Vloedgraven has the potential to earn Binghamton’s highest ever national ranking for an individual player once the rankings are released in January.

The National Indoor championships are the last tournament of the fall season. It’s back to the practice courts for the Bearcats until outdoor play starts in the spring.

“Now we go from a 20-hour practice period down to an eight-hour period due to NCAA rules,” said Cohen. “We’ll work a lot on our conditioning to try to and stay in shape up until school lets out in December. Besides that, we’ll just try to work on some of the things that I noticed during the fall season that these guys could work on individually for the next month in order to get them ready for the spring season.”