At just the right time, Cazenovia boys tennis singles player Nate Romig found his top form.
Because he did so, Romig is heading for New York City and the USTA/Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to compete this weekend in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships.
Having already won first singles in the previous week’s Section III Class B tournament, Romig returned to SUNY-Cortland for the early rounds of the sectional state qualifier and quickly went to work, getting a 6-2, 6-0 victory over NewHartford’s Ethan Lampert in the first round.
In the quarterfinals, Romig shut out Manlius-Pebble Hill’s Trilok Reddy 6-0, 6-0, which put him in the semifinals. A win over Christian Brothers Academy’s Ben Vlassis would guarantee a state tournament berth since the top three advanced.
It helped, no doubt, that Vlassis had to rally to win both of his earlier matches in three sets over Scott Minnoe (Auburn) and John Robert Corasaniti (New Hartford), but even so, Romig did not take the assignment lightly and, by scores of 6-0 and 6-1, quickly put away Vlassis and reached the final.
Now, in Wednesday’s final at Syracuse University’s SkyTop Courts, Romig wanted to give Fayetteville-Manlius star Riley Ma a good match, since Ma had not lost a game in his first two matches before beating Dean (brother of Ben) Vlassis 6-4, 6-3 in the semifinals.
But Ma retained the form he had showed the day before, claiming the first set 6-1 and then beating Romig 6-0 in the second set. In the third-place match, Dean Vlassis beat his brother, Ben, 6-1, 6-1,.
So Dean Vlassis will join Romig and Ma in the state tournament along with three doubles teams from Section III – Jamesville-DeWitt’s Robert Dotterer and Peter Hatton along with Red Rams teammates Ishan Gajra and Tyler Glowaki, plus F-M’s Taran Judge and Chris Lansing.
