This sweet 16 must be shared.

And you can blame the rain for that.

Junior Javier Garrapiz was named co-champion of the 42nd annual Southern Intercollegiate Championships over the rain-soaked weekend, as the Georgia men’s tennis team played host to the first tournament of the fall season.

Garrapiz was forced to share the title with Georgia Tech’s Guillermo Gomez due to the massive amounts of rain that fell on Athens Monday, which prevented the final singles match to play out.

“I thought we showed a lot of resiliency [despite the bad weather],” head coach Manuel Diaz said. “Our objective was to get a lot of matches. Maybe we could have gotten another round in; that final [singles match] never got played, our Division I [singles players] got their matches in.”

In the face of the persistent rain pushing Georgia and the other competitors of the tournament indoors, the Bulldogs hammered away at its competition before facing some intersquad play in the quarterfinals and then again in the semifinals of the Division I singles draw.

Seniors Nate Schnugg and Christian Vitulli had it out in a fierce three-set match in quarterfinal play with Vitulli winning the first set 6-1 before Schnugg snagged the second set and the tiebreaker 7-5 and 1-0(6), respectively.

“I thought it was great competition. I thought the level of tennis was very, very high out of both of those guys. I thought it could have really gone either way. We’re just looking forward to [Vitulli] continuing to work hard and continuing to improve this year,” Diaz said. “He’s going to play an integral part and a very important part.”

No. 4 seeded Schnugg then went on to compete against another Bulldog in Garrapiz, who knocked out the senior in two sets, 6-4, 6-2, on his way to being named co-champion.

Diaz was pleased with the way his Bulldogs competed after shaking off some rust and getting back into the swing of things.

“That was a major component – just get the guys matches. A lot of them had not played a whole lot of matches in the near past,” Diaz said. “I thought our level was very good, and I think that in one or two more tournaments we’re going to see some continued improvement.”

With the weather forecast projecting showers and thunderstorms for the next six days, practicing outdoors for upcoming outdoor tournaments does not seem to be an option, something Diaz says will not lower the intensity of the Bulldogs’ training regiments.

“We’re going to keep on rolling because we thankfully have indoor facilities, so our training won’t be suspended in any way or slowed down,” Diaz said. “We’re hoping for some good weather because we have some tournaments coming up and most of them are going to be played outdoors.”