Fayetteville-Manlius, East Syracuse Minoa, Jamesville-DeWitt and Manlius-Pebble Hill all had a rooting interest during last week’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship tournament.
Competing at the USTA-Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, no one did better than F-M singles player Josh Druger, who lost in the opening round, but recovered to win the consolation bracket with a series of victories.
Druger got paired up with no. 6 seed Felipe Ossis-Konig (Beacon) in the first round, a bit of an unlucky situation that Druger could not quite overcome, dropping the first set 6-2 and winning a second-set tie-breaker, 7-2, to take that set 7-6 before Ossis-Konig beat him 6-2 in the final set.
Showing an ability to bounce back, Druger went to the consolation bracket and won his first match in straight sets before a tremendous comeback, complete with a third-set tie-breaker that kept him alive, helped Druger beat Cannon Kingsley (Northport) 1-6, 7-6 (7-5), 10-4.
From there, Druger beat Lars Olson (Doane Stuart) 6-2, 6-4 to reach the consolation bracket final, where against Davis Fleming (O’Neil) he won again in two sets 6-4, 6-2 and claimed the medal.
MPH’s Andrew Mariados, in his second state tournament appearance, won his opening-round match and got to the round of 16, where he took on no. 5 seed Jimmy Purdy, from Bronxville. In straight sets, Mariados fell to Purdy 6-2, 6-3.
As for J-D’s Robert Dotterer, making his state tournament debut, he went up against no. 7 seed Ethan Nittolo (Townsend Harris) in his opening-round contest and only managed a single game in each set during a 6-1, 6-1 defeat to Nittolo.
Dotterer won twice in the consolation bracket, outlasting Keegan Morris (Sewanhaka) 6-2, 4-6, 12-10 and beating Lucas Arora (Cornwall) 6-1, 6-3 to get to a semifinal against Fleming. After winning the first set 6-4, Dotterer dropped the next two sets 6-1 and 10-6, leading Fleming to the consolation bracket final, where Druger beat him.
Each of the three Section III boys tennis players was eliminated by a player that reached at least the quarterfinal round.
Moving to doubles, F-M’s duo of Taran Judge and Chris Lansing went up against Alexander Stewart and Colin Stewart (Norwich) in their opening-round match and won it, beating the Stewart brothers 6-0, 6-4, only to fall in the round of 16 to another brother tandem, Half Hollow Hills West’s Dylan and Duane Davis, by scores of 6-0 and 6-2.
ESM’s Brandon Stone and Tyler Underwood also had a seeded opponent in the first round. Stone and Underwood met yet another well-regarded brother duo, no. 4 seed James Wei and Jeremy Wei (Horace Greeley), and managed to win the first set 7-5, only to run out of steam and drop the next two sets by margins of 6-2 and 6-1.
Stone and Underwood went to their consolation bracket and flourished, beating Chase Boyer and Pat Demaris 6-0, 6-0 and then surviving an epic match with Jackson Weisbrot and Evan Nierman (Half Hollow Hills West) 7-6 (7-4), 3-6, 10-8.
In the semifinal, Stone and Underwood again went to three sets and again won, this time holding off Kemal Oziz and Chris Kolesnick (Staten Island Tech) 6-2, 6-7 (7-5), 10-6, but in the consolation bracket final Stone and Underwood lost, 6-2, 6-4, to Brighton’s Josh Marvald and Ryan Gao.
Again, it took eventual participants in the quarterfinals to eliminate Stone, Underwood, Lansing and Judge from state tournament competition, leaving only West Genesee’s brother tandem of Brent and Garrett Boleslav alive going into that quarterfinal round on Friday morning.
As it turned out, the Boleslavs lost to Mamaroneck’s Hope Crawford and Courage Crawford, who went on to take the state title. Webster Schroeder junior Matt Gamble won the state singles championship for the second year in a row.
