BOYS TENNIS: Elco falls in district semis
LANCASTER>> Blaise Casselbury saw off Adam Bahney in straight sets in the No. 1 singles match Wednesday, the clinching match in Lancaster Country Day's 3-1 win over Elco in the District 3 Class AA team tennis tournament, held at Racquet Club West.
Racquet Club West in Lancaster was the third location option for the semifinal tussle. LCD could not make its original slotted time at Hershey Racquet Club due to Advance Placement testing at the school; threatening weather Wednesday forced a move from the second option, Elco's outdoor courts.
LCD will play Wyomissing Thursday afternoon at 3:15 for the AA crown. The Spartans beat York Suburban 3-0 at HRC.
Elco will square off at 12:30 Thursday with Suburban in the third-place match. That match is significant because the winner earns the third and final PIAA berth out of the district. A scheduled regular season contest between the two programs never happened.
Both AA matches will be held at HRC.
"Going into this we knew it was going to be a tight match across the board and it was," Elco coach Zach Cook said. "There was not going to be a blow-away match and they just had a bit more firepower than we did. We played well, but we could have played a little better.
"I'm proud of the job we've done and that we still have an opportunity to make it into states with our match tomorrow against York Suburban. We were supposed to play them early on, but it got snowed out and was never made up. Now we get the chance to play them. Our guys are psyched up. They want to get to the next level as much as anyone else."
Once settled inside RCW Wednesday, the Cougars took the Nos. 1 and 3 singles courts and second doubles to defeat the Raiders. Elco's Linden and Mason Bennetch grabbed the only court of the day for the Raiders with a 6-4, 6-4 defeat of Ethan Sterenfeld and Derian Hoover at No. 1 doubles. The second singles match between Galen McNaughton and Sebastian Pena did not finish. Pena was up a set.
With LCD leading 2-1, Casselbury got a late service break in the second set for separation from Bahney to enable his 6-3, 6-4 triumph. The pair did not meet in the D-3 singles tournament, having been bracketed in separate halves.
But it was LCD's win at second doubles – where Nate Parent and Neal Kerschner beat Elco's Christian Stahl and Dawson Smith 6-4, 7-5 for a 2-0 lead – that most pleased veteran LCD coach Jim Phipps.
"That was the surprise for us, it really was," Phipps said. "We knew that is was going to be close up top because Adam and Galen are such great players. I was hoping that our doubles could help pull us through or put us over the top and that's what happened."
The No. 3 singles match featuring Elco's Dylan Spitler and LCD's Drew Kopan was the first to wrap. The pair battled through a first set tiebreaker before Kopan took control in the second set to spin a 7-6(2), 6-0 victory.
"Drew did not play as well as he normally does in the first set," Phipps said. "(Spitler) kept some balls in play and I think Drew got a bit frustrated and made a lot of errors. But in the second set Drew started to take it to him. Instead of playing defensive tennis, he started playing a little more offensively and that was, I think, the key. It changed the flow and the energy."