Action continued for the Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool boys tennis teams during the April school break, culminating in a second match against each other.
The two neighbors met last Friday afternoon, with the Northstars out to avenge a 6-1 defeat to the Warriors on April 12 – and pulling it off in large part because it swept all three singles matches on the way to a 5-2 victory.
Connor Millias got it started for the Northstars, shutting our Aaron Alejo 6-0, 6-0. Though it went longer, Justin Kegebein got past Matt Renk 6-4, 6-4, while in first singles Rich Dennis got through a tough first set and then beat Evan Vogue 7-5, 6-2.
Liverpool would get points on the doubles side, where Mike Fensken paired with Alexandar Dzodzic to sweep Mitch Eager and Kavin Inthirakot 6-2, 6-2, with Doddi and Jeff Meyer earning a 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) win over Trey Nordin-Abbey and John Barraco.
However, C-NS got the clinching point in first doubles from Jack Irwin and Nate Perrotta, who beat the Munski brothers 6-2, 6-3. Meanwhile, the last match went to a long third-set tie-breaker before Henry Rose and Mason Gross completed their comeback to beat Jeff Noll and Hayato Hirota 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (15-13).
Before all this, both teams would face plenty of adversity.
Liverpool could not keep up with West Genesee in last Monday’s match, falling 6-1 to the Wildcats and counting on Vogue to earn that lone point during a 6-0, 6-2 victory over Alex Argiro in second singles.
Otherwise, Maestri lost, 6-3, 6-4, to Connor McGuigan, with Dzodic falling to Chris Upwood 6-1, 7-5. In doubles, the Munski brothers had a 6-3, 6-4 defeat to Nick Bentley and Stefan Atanasov as Doddi and Renk fell to Jimmy Harter and John Northrop 6-3, 6-3.
C-NS, with just one win in its first five matches of the spring, got no help from visiting Fayetteville-Manlius last Monday afternoon as the Hornets, running its 18-year-long win streak to 263 consecutive matches, shut out the Northstars 7-0.
All of C-NS’s challenges came in doubles, where Dennis and Millias took F-M’s James DeSorbo and Vince Sorrentino to a first-set tie-breaker, but lost, 7-6 (7-2), 6-3 as Eager and Perrotta fell to Ravi Dhawan and Vince Grasso 6-4, 6-1.
Between them, the teams of Barraco-Nordin-Abbey and Rose-Gross got just one game in their two matches. Worse yet, in singles Just in Kegebein fell to Riley Ma 6-0, 6-0 as Inthirakot and Irwin also lost by those same margins to, respectively, Taran Judge and Michael Miller.
Then F-M took aim at Liverpool on Wednesday, with the same 7-0 result and the same situation where the emphasis for the Warriors was on trying to find points in doubles, but not doing so.
Vogue and Maestri paired up, pushing DeSorbo and Sorrentino for a while, but still taking a 7-5, 6-2 loss. Doddi and Meyer lost to Luke Qi and Jeremy Zhang 6-0, 7-5, with Renk and Dzodic taking a 6-2, 7-5 defeat to Rohan Dhawan and Richard Wang.
C-NS broke out of its skid Thursday in a non-league match with Central Square, topping the Redhawks 6-1, In singles play, Dennis lost, 6-4, 6-4, to Stan Kubis, but Millias overcame a terrible start to beat Zack Griffing 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 and Kegebein got a 6-4, 6-2 win over Josh Dynka.
The Northstars did claim all of the points in doubles. Gross and Rose topped Ryan Merkel and Sam Venne in three sets 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, while Nordin-Abbey and Barraco shut out Tom Ossevort and Matt Baskall 6-0, 6-0. In between those results, Perotta and Irwin paired up to beat Jake Kane and Nate Ecker 6-2, 7-6 (7-3).
