Written by Coach Domian
Boys varsity tennis traveled to Pennsylvania over the weekend to compete in the George C. Shafer Doubles Invitational, hosted by Episcopal Academy. Out of the 16 teams that participated in the four draw event, DA placed third overall and won the 4th doubles bracket. In addition- and even more importantly- the team won the Thomas C. Kent Sportsmanship Award. The nine-person squad displayed how friendly competition benefits everyone and truly carried themselves with grace and class throughout the event.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. The weather did not cooperate on Saturday, so while only a handful of matches were able to be played outdoors (ours was one of them!), everything else got moved indoors. Since we now went from 14 usable courts to only 4, it was a long day waiting to play. Deerfield stayed focused and all four teams cruised through their first round matches: #1 Weldon/Li bageled Hill School, #2 Feng/Naughton took down Malvern Prep 8-2, #3 Sparacio/McMahon (our one outdoor match!) won 8-3 after finding themselves down 1-3 at the start, and #4 Kokosadze/Kasumov won 8-3 against Penn Charter.
In order to reduce the number of matches needing to be played on limited courts, the tournament director decided to switch from a double elimination format to single elimination. Knowing teams needed to win to stay in the event, the quarterfinal matches proved to be an achilles heel for the Doors. #1 started evenly against a talented, confident duo from Brunswick but once broken at 1-2 Weldon/Li couldn’t catch up and fell 8-3. In the #2 bracket, Feng and Naughton pulled ahead 6-4 against their opponents from the Landon School but soon found themselves down 6-7. With a big hold, they entered a tiebreaker. Some early volley errors put them down 1-4 in the breaker, but they dug in to level it 4-4. Unfortunately, a few more errors and solid playing from Landon gave the Bears the victory 7-5 and our #2 team too was eliminated. #3 Sparacio/McMahon then had to face eventual individual and team champs Sidwell Friends. The team played textbook doubles and kept things perfectly even for the first half of the proset, but Sidwell pulled away and won it 8-4. With #4 being our only hope for survival into Sunday, Kokosadze/Trees teamed up together (you could mix up teams in the #4 bracket in order to allow more players to compete), quickly went up 6-1, got a little tight and found themselves only up 6-4, but had a solid finish to defeat Gilman School 8-4.
Fueled up and ready for the semi-finals on Sunday, Kokosadze and Kasumov again teamed up on a very windy, cool morning and had a big win over Lawrenceville to advance to the finals! While the boys started hot and went up 5-2, Lawrenceville held and broke serve to make it 5-4. The teams traded breaks to make it 6-5, at which point we broke serve for the third time in a row to go up 7-5. Not ready to give up, Lawrenceville won the next game but we stayed calm and closed out the match 8-6.
After an hour break, Kokosadze/Kasumov- who had been playing so well together- went back out for the final matchup against Brunswick. Unfazed by the havoc the wind was putting on serves and returns, DA took an early lead and never looked back, winning the bracket convincingly 8-3.
Many thanks to Episcopal coach and tournament director Whit Powell for running a wonderful event; Coach Breault for being our driver-extraordinaire and super chaperone; Janice Lin and Bob and Kate Naughton for their presence, support, and sustenance; and Bob Howe for giving us the green light for the whole experience.
The team will get right back to work and will be ready to host Westminster at home on Wednesday, April 30 at 3:30pm.