After winning both singles and doubles at West Point this past weekend, Amar Tahirovic ’26 was named the Bison of the Week. He has earned his place as the No.1 seed at the Patriot League’s qualifying tournament for the ITA Conference Masters Championships. Along with his impressive singles win, he teamed up with Brendan McDonald ’26 for his doubles bracket victory in tiebreakers against Army and Lehigh.
In his singles matches, Tahirovic had a 6-1,6-3 win over Lehigh, a 6-1,6-0 win over Army and a 6-0,6-0 against Colgate. However, the biggest game came against his own teammate, Adam Stavrakas ’26, who was fourth-seeded and had not yet lost a match. After a close win for Stavrakas in an 8-6 tiebreaker set, Tahirovic came back and won the second set 6-3 and finally beat Stavrakas in the third set, an 8-6 tiebreaker.
“Coming into the conference Patriot League tournament representing Bucknell as the No.1 seed in both singles and doubles, I felt some pressure on my shoulders for sure,” Tahirovic told “The Bucknellian.” “This is a big stage where you want to showcase your abilities and your best self. After all, I felt like I handled the pressure pretty well, knowing my strengths and what I have in my skill set. Going into each match, I really just told myself to trust myself and play how I play in practice, which was aggressive and being on the front foot against my opponents. This ended up working out for me because it took off some pressure of playing bad or not living up to people’s expectations of me being the first seed.”
Currently, Tahirovic has a record of 9-1 in singles, and he, along with McDonald, is now headed off to Rome, Ga. for the ITA Conference Masters Championships Nov. 7-10. At the conference, there will be selections of 32 singles players and 32 doubles teams from each Division I member school. At the end of the conference, the four semi-finalists will get an automatic spot in the NCAA Singles Championship. For the doubles teams, the champion, runner-up and third-place teams will get an automatic spot in the NCAA Doubles Championship.
