By the time all was done in last week’s Section III boys tennis state qualifying tournaments, a total of eight players from Fayetteville-Manlius, Jamesville-DeWitt and Christian Brothers Academy were all on their way to New York City.
That’s because they all earned top-three finishes, which meant one more weekend of competition as part of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships at the USTA-Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens.
F-M, who had swept all five divisions (three singles, two doubles) of the previous week’s sectional Class A tournament, saw Riley Ma easily earn a berth in the state tournament by winning the qualifier.
Ma had 6-0, 6-0 shutouts over Aidan King (Watertown) and Chris Gaige (Holland Patent) in the first two rounds. Meanwhile, CBA’s Dean Vlassis beat F-M’s Tom Miro 6-0, 6-0 and topped Cooperstown’s Will Weldon 6-2, 6-1, but in the semifinals, Vlassis could not quite keep up with Ma in a 6-4, 6-3 decision.
And what made it worse was that, in Thursday’s third-place match, Dean Vlassis would face his own brother, Ben, with a state tournament berth at stake. Ben had made two comebacks in his early-round matches, rallying past Auburn’s Scott Minnoe 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 and New Hartford’s John Robert Corasaniti 1-6, 6-3, 6-4.
After all this, Ben Vlassis lost, 6-0, 6-0, to Cazenovia’s Nate Romig in the semifinals. This set up the match between, ironically, two CBA Brothers who were actually brothers, but it was Dean Vlassis handling Ben 6-1, 6-1 as, in the final, Ma completed his run with a 6-1, 6-0 win over Romig.
Earlier in the tournament, Corasaniti had beaten F-M’s Jeremy Zhang 6-0, 6-4, Zhang having gone three sets to beat Chris Mazza (Sauquoit Valley) 4-6, 6-3, 6-1. Manlius-Pebble Hill’s Trilok Reddy also won in the first round over Lucas Smith (Hamilton) 6-0, 6-4 before Romig beat him 6-0, 6-0.
In doubles, J-D’s tandem of Robert Dotterer and Peter Hatton, along with F-M’s duo of Taran Judge and Chris Lansing, had state-tournament berths locked up before their finals showdown on Thursday, and it didn’t disappoint, going three sets as Dotterer and Hatton won the opener 6-2, dropped the second set 6-3 but then swept Judge and Lansing 6-0 in the final set.
To get to the final, Dotterer and Hatton beat CBA’s David Hoag and Shivam Nanavati 6-0, 6-0, and then blanked Jack Lawson and Anthony Panasci (Skaneateles) by those same scores before a semifinal against J-D’s Ishan Gajra and Tyler Glowaki. Here, Dotterer and Hatton showed little mercy, beating their Red Rams counterparts 6-2, 6-1.
On the other half of the doubles bracket, Judge and Lansing got started with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Baldwinsville’s Sam Damato and Scott Ferrari, and then really cranked it up, blanking Fulton’s Anthony and Robert Salerno 6-0, 6-0 and doing the same to Cooperstown’s Tyler Bertram and Pierce Snyder in the semifinals.
Gajra and Glowaki had beaten F-M’s Nolan Chiles and Joel Farella 6-3, 6-2 in the quarterfinals. With the semifinal loss to Dotterer and Hatton, Gajra and Glowaki had to beat Bertram and Snyder in the third-place match to reach the state tournament – and after dropping the first set 6-3, the J-D pair rallied to win the next two sets by 6-1 and 6-2 margins to advance.
CBA’s duo of Tommy Daviau and Zach Popp lost in the opening round, a 6-1, 6-1 decision to Cicero-North Syracuse’s Justin Kegebein and Connor Millias.
