Though he missed much of the team’s flawless Ivy campaign with a lingering back injury, Nguyen was in Fish’s lineup against Brown, Harvard’s only real competition for the Ancient Eight title. He won his match 6-3, 6-4, despite missing three weeks before the contest, and the Crimson went on to take the Ivy crown.

Meanwhile, senior Chris Chiou played what Fish deemed “a career match” against the Orange and Blue, destroying his opponent 7-5, 6-2 to put his team on the board.

Chiou took advantage of every match he played in the Harvard lineup, stringing along an 11-5 record and battling whenever his coach gave him the nod, even the day before his MCAT exam.

Rounding out the senior class is George Turner, who has played his entire career with, as Fish once said, “the most extreme passion.”

When Harvard dropped all six first sets to Minnesota in February, the team had to mount a miraculous comeback to manage a 4-3 victory. Turner clinched the fourth point with an 0-6, 7-5, 6-4 win after losing the first seven games.

Traditionally the last off the courts, Turner is known for stretching his matches for all they are worth. When he finished second against Dartmouth earlier this season, he mused that he remembered finishing that quickly “only when I lose. Bad.

“I’m always out there last,” he explained with a grin. “The guys don’t know what to do when they hear me cheering after my matches.”

Next year, the Crimson will be without the five seniors who have led this year’s team to an Ivy Title and the Sweet 16.

“Every so often there are landmark classes that have so much to do with where the team goes,” Fish said in March, “and this is one of those classes.

“Every one of them has been a contributor. So it’s sad, because we’re going to miss them totally, but in terms of their contributions to the program, it’s like their places are firmly established [by] what they’ve done.”

The seniors’ collective final match against Illinois was disappointing to say the last—yet as the sun set on this year’s season, with Nguyen and Lingman among the last to leave the courts, something seemed fitting just the same.

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.