Nov. 9, 2002

FARMERS BRANCH, TX - Old Dominion's Zoltan Csanadi (Timisoara, Romania) and Izak van der Merwe (Kempton Park, South Africa) picked up a semifinal win Friday night in men's doubles at the Omni Hotels National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, the second of three national championships for collegiate tennis this season.

Csanadi and Van Der Merwe beat the tournament's defending champions and No. 3 seeds Ryan Redondo and Oliver Maiberger 9-7 in tonight's semifinals. Yesterday they opened the tournament by knocking out the No. 1 seeds. They will face the winner of a semifinal match between Stanford's Scott Lipsky and David Martin in tomorrow's 2 p.m. CT final.

Against Redondo and Maiberger they were able to break Maiberger's serve at 8-7 to close out the match. They are now 15-1 this season and have already won three tournament titles. They are the first from ODU to ever reach a national men's doubles final.

ODU qualified for this week's tournament by virtue of winning the Omni Hotels Mideast title last month in Chapel Hill, N.C.

The Omni Hotels National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, the nation's premier collegiate indoor tennis tournaments for Division I men and women, are presented by The Dallas Morning News and hosted by SMU at the Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch.

The Omni Hotels National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships feature a 32-player singles field and 16-team doubles field for men and women, including: qualifiers from Omni Hotels Regional Championships held across the country during October, the Omni Hotels National Small College champions, the winners of the Icy Hot/ITA Men's and Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships and at-large and wild card selections made by the ITA National Tournament Committee. Overall, more than 10,000 players from nearly 600 schools participate annually in the Omni Hotels Regional and National Intercollegiate Championships.