As part of last week’s Section III Class C-1 tournament at SUNY-Cortland, the Skaneateles boys tennis team would find varying degrees of success, with Jack Belinski doing the best as he earned the third singles championship without dropping a set in three matches.
In the quarterfinals on Monday, Belinski overcame an early deficit to beat Holland Patent’s Ethan Ellis 6-7, 6-0, 6-2, and later that day in the semifinals blanked Lowville’s Felix McCue 6-0, 6-0.
This led to a final against Manlius-Pebble Hill’s Dan Mezzalingua two days later. Given an extra day to rest due to rain, Belinski pulled out the first set 6-4 and fought off Mezzalingua’s challenge to win the second set 7-5 and the title.
Elsewhere, the Lakers’ Dan Judge beat Sauquoit’s Anthony Malysa 6-1, 6-3, but lost in the second singles semifinals to Cazenovia’s Mitch Romig 6-2, 6-1, ultimately finishing fourth. Duncan Raddant lost in first singles to MPH’s Dan Braverman 6-0, 6-0.
In second doubles, Chris Burgher and Anthony Panasci prevailed, 6-1, 6-3, over Sauquoit Valley’s Zach Ray and Isaac Schultz, moving to the semifinals against Dori Csendes and Reed Porter (Cooperstown), where they lost, 6-2, 6-2, but recovered to finish third when they swept Connor Nicol and Hugo Zabielowicz (Lowville) 6-3, 6-0.
Much the same thing happened in first doubles to Nate Fouts and Andrew Neumann, who won twice to get to the semifinals.
Fouts and Neumann beat Daron Snow and Daevon Stubbs (Sauquoit Valley) 6-2, 6-0, and then won a 6-3, 6-4 decision over Zach Blanchard and Adam Burbank (Canastota) in the quarterfinals.
Then the Skaneateles pair played a tough semifinal but lost 6-4, 7-6, to Cazenovia’s Teddy Coughlin and Dan Gavilondo, and in the third-place match dropped a third-set tie-breaker in a 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 defeat to MPH’s Camden Ciotoli and Keerthi Martyn.
