Not content with what they accomplished at the local level, Jamesville-DeWitt boys tennis stars Robert Dotterer and Peter Hatton would make a deep run in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association tournament, too.
All of the state’s top players gathered at the USTA-Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens, which is the annual site of the U.S. Open. Dotterer and Hatton were given the no. 7 seed following their straight-sets run through the Section III qualifier on May 24-25.
Living up to that seed, Dotterer and Hatton won both of their matches on Thursday. First, they got a 6-0, 6-0 shut over Brooklyn Tech’s Lawrence Shoykhet and Alex Hyunh, leading to a round of 16 match with Spencer Lowitt and Preet Rajpal, from Syosset.
This match against the Long Island pair proved close, but in the key points of both sets, Dotterer and Hatton came through, winning the first set 7-5 and the second set 6-4 in order to advance to Friday’s quarterfinals.
Here, though, the run would end. Hope Crawford and Courage Crawford, the 2015 state champions from Mamaroneck, stood as the top seeds, having dropped just five games in their first two matches.
Dotterer and Hatton would double that total in the second set alone, but it still wasn’t enough. The Crawford brothers won the first 6-1, and then withstood a strong comeback attempt by the J-D pair to claim the second set 7-5 and end Dotterer and Hatton’s state title push.
Also in doubles, the Fayetteville-Manlius duo of James DeSorbo and Vince Sorrentino could not make it out of the opening round. Against Cold Spring Harbor’s Zach Kassam and Sangjin Song, DeSorbo and Sorrentino got swept in the first set 6-0 and, though they played better in the second set, dropped that one by a 7-5 margin.
Like their single counterparts, doubles team that lost in the first round went to the consolation bracket. There, DeSorbo and Sorrentino took a 6-3, 7-6 (7-1) defeat to Olean’s Jake Volz and Logan Cross.
Meanwhile, F-M’s Taran Judge, taking part in singles, lost his opening-round match to Guilderland’s Alex Federov. The Merrimack College-bound Federov proved too powerful for Judge, prevailing in straight sets 6-1, 6-0.
Put into the consolation bracket, Judge beat Brendan Whalen (Plattsburgh) by those same 6-1, 6-0 scores in his first match, making it to Friday’s action, where he lost, 6-4, 6-1, to Shawn Jackson (Susan Wagner), who eventually reached the consolation bracket finals.
Elsewhere in the state tournament, Cazneovia’s Nate Romig and Auburn’s Scott Minnoe both lost their first-round singles matches, though Romig did make a run in the consolation bracket to the quarterfinals to match Judge. Cooperstown’s Tyler Bertram and Pierce Snyder won their doubles opener, only to fall in the round of 16 to another Syosset pair, Neel Rajesh and Kabir Rajpal.
