LI’s Noah Rubin Earns ACC Freshman and Player of the Year Honors
Long Island native Noah Rubin of the 11th-ranked Wake Forest men's tennis team made history Monday morning becoming the first student-athlete in Atlantic Coast Conference men's tennis history to earn both ACC Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year.
Rubin is the first player to win ACC Player of the Year in program history and is the third Freshman of the Year honoree to come out of Wake Forest, following in the footsteps of Derrick Spice in 2002 and Todd Paul in 2004. He was named ACC Player of the Week a conference-high four times during the regular season, including each of the final three weeks of the season leading into last week's ACC Championships.
In 22 matches during the spring season, Rubin posted a stellar record of 19-3 with 18 of those victories coming at number one singles. In conference play, Rubin posted a 10-1 mark with his only loss coming to Nicolas Alvarez of Duke, who was the 11th-ranked player in the country at the time of the match.
Even more impressive, Rubin posted a 13-3 mark against nationally-ranked players, while posting wins over then-number one Sebastian Stiefelmeyer of Louisville, number seven Ryan Shane of Virginia, then-number nine Quentin Monaghan of Notre Dame, and then-number 15 Brayden Schnur of North Carolina. Of those four top-15 players, Rubin posted straight-set wins against three in the ITA Top 10 (Stiefelmeyer, Shane and Monaghan).
When it mattered most in the ACC Championships, Rubin posted three straight-set wins over the likes of Hunter Harrington of Clemson, number 61 Christopher Eubanks of Georgia Tech and number seven Shane of Virginia.
