LEWISTON – Four courts down, Ben Stein watched as players dubbed “elite” at his local tennis club got a little bit more attention. They played top junior events, many of them were ranked and heading off to top Division I or Division III colleges to continue playing.

But Bates College coach Paul Gastonguay saw something in the wiry kid from Pelham, N.Y.

“Ben was like a lowly player down on the fifth or sixth court, and I don’t know if they knew who he was,” Gastonguay said. “He was so far down. But what sparked my interest in Ben, when I saw him at my camp, I saw a tremendous athlete who had a lot of physical abilities, and I knew he was a competitor.”

Stein proved that and then some this season.

Last week, the graduating Bates College senior played nine matches over three days at the NCAA Division III Men’s Tennis Championships.

All he did there was earn his third All-America award, reach the singles final as an unseeded player and paired up with longtime doubles partner Amrit Rupasinghe of Sri Lanka to win the national doubles title.

“It’s cool to beat up on the guys that used to be too good to even bother paying attention to you,” Stein admitted. “It shows that when you really dedicate yourself to something, make a decent effort at something, you can get the result you expect.”

Double the success

It was both Stein and Rupasinghe’s second crack at the tournament. The pair played together last season and fought their way to the national semifinals with the tournament on their home court.

In the fall, the duo did well at more national events, and were ranked a highly as No. 4 in the country. A couple of rough spots during the spring season, however, dropped the team’s ranking. They entered the doubles draw unseeded.

“We did really well in the fall, too, and we were fourth in the country at that point,” Rupasinghe said. “I was kind of surprised, but in the regular season we did have a couple of bad matches. It’s all up to the committee, and it really didn’t matter. All of those teams are good.”

This time, though, the pair was ready.

“This time around, we really felt we deserved to be there,” Stein said. “To be quite honest, last year, with a semifinal finish, we were content with what we’d done.”

Not this time around.

Stein and Rupasinghe, a Sri Lankan national champion, matched up against the second-seeded team of Max Liberty-Point and Ilya Gendelman of UC Santa Cruz. The Bobcats fell behind early as the Banana Slugs won the first set 6-3, but they rebounded with consecutive 6-3 set wins to advance.

Stein and Rupasinghe then faced the Kenyon College pair of Michael Greenberg and Will VandenBerg. The Bobcats won the first set in a tiebreaker and cruised in the second set for a 7-6(1), 6-2 victory.

Another three-setter in the semifinal round against Washington University in St. Louis doubles team Charlie Cutler and Chris Hoeland (7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4), Stein and Rupasinghe earned the national title with a win over, of all teams, Bowdoin.

“To play Bowdoin in the finals, honestly, it’s more gratifying to beat them than anyone else,” Gastonguay said, “but with that comes a heck of a lot of added pressure. It was a weird psychology. We had to make sure we didn’t worry about who we were playing, but about each individual ball, each point.”

On the subject of whether it was better to be a national champion in Sri Lanka or at Bates, Rupasinghe never hesitated.

“Definitely being a Division III champion,” Rupasinghe said. “I would say this is something I wanted since I came to college, to win a national championship. I think I’m the first player from Sri Lanka to do that. I couldn’t believe it. It was like, this is not real.”

Single enjoyment

While Stein and Rupasinghe battled for the doubles title, playing 11 sets over four matches in three days, Stein had some other things on his mind.

Specifically, Stein was after another piece of hardware.

After dispatching Robbie Erani of host Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 6-1, 2-6, 6-2, in the first round, he clinched his second career All-America honor, and his first in singles play (his third came in doubles later that day).

On Day 2, Stein pulled the upset of the tournament. After defeating Andrew Wang of Johns Hopkins University in the quarterfinal round, 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-0, Stein upended No. 1 seed John Kauss of Gustavus Adolphus, 7-5, 7-5, to reach the championship final.

In all, Stein went 8-1 overall in singles and doubles, and played in 24 total sets- including three tiebreakers – over three days.

“It was hot, and it was exhausting, honestly,” Stein said. “But it was worth it.”

Maybe tennis, maybe not

Rupasinghe will be back at Bates next fall, and while he is going to miss his friend and doubles partner (“I’ll make do in doubles, and worry about singles now,” he said), Rupasinghe is looking forward to the challenge.

Meanwhile, Stein still hasn’t decided if this run to the titles will act as a springboard to more tennis, or if it will be a footnote in his academic career.

“I told him last week, he has the athletic ability,” Gastonguay said. “I told him, ‘You still have a few deficiencies in your game, but if you took the time to work on those things and that’s all you did, you could really do some things.’ He’s such a competitor, and that’s the element that’s really critical.”

That nature of Stein’s is perhaps what’s stopping him from giving up on the game, too.

“It depends on whether I get a job or not, at this point,” Stein said. “If don’t get a job, at this point, traveling and doing some tournaments, I don’t see where that would be a problem. But you can’t just go and play a couple of tournaments here and there and be all right with it. You have to invest a lot of time and energy into it.”

One thing is for sure, though: No one is likely to stick Stein on the “fifth or sixth court” any longer.