The athletic office was kind enough to provide us with a coach bus for this trip for Exeter, so we had a nice, smooth ride to New Hampshire. After a comfortable warmup, we played reasonably competitive doubles, with our second and third teams especially hanging tough. A few loose points from Alfi and Gideon gave up a late break, and they were the first off with an 8-6 loss. Carl and Matthew, lacking their usual precision from both the baseline and net, went down 8-5, but we retained our pride when Scott and Darren triumphed in a tight 9-7 decision.
We had a tough time in singles. Darren had another difficult matchup against our perennial foe Rex at #3 – although he dropped a quick first set, Darren picked things up in the second; unfortunately, so did Rex, who took it 6-1. At #4, Matthew was unable to get much going against the fiery senior Kim, and Gideon, again thoroughly flustered, wend down 2 and 1 to Sanson. Although that clinched the match for Exeter, the remaining three were all close to the end, and so we played them out. Alfi managed only a handful of games against Escobar the younger, but PEA’s success finally stopped there.
Carl did a great job against Nguy, cleaning up a few things after a close first set to take the second more comfortably. All eyes shifted to Scott, who had split with Gruss, and who led the supertiebreaker from start to finish, closing it out at 10-6.
With our record at 5-5 and a Choate rescheduling unlikely, all we can do is hold our breath and hope for a tournament birth. We still have two matches left: Suffield on Monday and Cheshire on Saturday.
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Exeter 5, Deerfield 2
Ryan Nguy/Cam Gruss (E) d. Carl Grant/Matthew Wuyan (D) 8-5
Scott Danforth/Darren Ho (D) d. Rex Tercek/Joon Kim (E) 9-7
Sergio Escobar/Pablo Sanson (E) d. Alfi Auersperg/Gideon Yektai (D) 8-6
Grant (D) d. Nguy (E) 6-4, 6-2
Danforth (D) d. Gruss (E) 3-6, 6-3, 10-6
Tercek (E) d. Ho (D) 6-0, 6-1
Kim (E) d. Wuyan (D) 6-2, 6-1
Escobar (E) d. Auersperg (D) 6-2, 6-3
Sanson (E) d. Yektai (D) 6-2, 6-1