After a regular season where it took just one defeat, the Westhill boys tennis team went to Utica Parkway for last week’s sectional Class B-1 tournament, with Marcellus also in the field.
Westhill’s Conor Mahoney and Nick Sauro reached the second doubles final, beating Jacob Hill and Eric Hyde (Mexico) 6-2, 6-1 before topping Zach Falkenburg and Matt Lanphear (Chittenango) 6-1, 6-4 in the semifinals.
The title match pitted Mahoney and Sauro against Jamesville-DeWitt’s Somil Aggarwal and Mark Bratslavsky. The second set went to a tie-breaker, but Mahoney and Sauro were unable to top Aggarwal and Bratslavsky, who won 6-3, 7-6.
Also for the Warriors, David Bleskoski reached the third singles final, having beaten Alex Cottrell (Homer) 6-3, 6-1 before claiming a 6-4, 6-7, 6-3 semifinal over New Hartford’s David Fenner to get a title match against CBA’s Shivam Ninavati, who proved too tough, defeating Bleskoski 6-1, 6-4.
In first doubles, the Warriors’ Tom Chaddock and Ryan Rolince swept CBA’s Will Holstein and Ayo Oguntola 6-0, 6-0 and topped Damian Brown and Cooper Swartout (Cortland) 6-4, 6-2, but lost in the semifinals to J-D’s Essex Glowaki and Dhruv Nanavati 7-5, 6-0.
Brown and Swartout beat Marcellus’ Shawn Manke and Justin Costa 6-3, 6-1 in the first round, while in second doubles the Mustangs’ Noah LeFever and Dan Wrona fell to New Hartford’s Austin Franklin and Charlie Klempay 6-1, 6-4.
Elsewhere in singles, Westhill’s Jackson Bradley fell 7-6, 0-6, 6-4 to Carthage’s Seth Lander and Mike Ferrara fell to the Comets’ Lelan O’Brien 6-2, 6-2 as Marcellus’ Andrew Kammer beat Grayson Jones (Cortland) 6-2, 6-0 before a 6-4, 6-0 defeat to New Hartford’s John-Robert Corasaniti.
The Class A sectional tournament at SUNY-Cortland had West Genesee in the mix, with the doubles team of Matt Mannara and James Plunkett advancing all the way to the finals in first doubles.
Mannara and Plunkett had little trouble in wins over Edwin Ogren-Jared Smith (Central Square) 6-0, 6-1 and Anthony Salerno-Robert Salerno (Fulton) 6-0, 6-1, but still could not do much in the final against the super Fayetteville-Manlius duo of Taran Judge and Riley Ma, who prevailed 6-0, 6-0.
Much the same thing happened to WG’s second doubles team of Stefan Atanasov and John Northrop, who beat David Demazure and Dan Rivers (East Syracuse Minoa) 6-3, 6-0 and then won a 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 semifinal classic over Fulton’s Collin Bennett and Jessie Smithers, only to take defeat in the final to F-M’s Joel Farella and Jeremy Zhang 6-2, 6-1.
Noah Ruston was in third singles, where he outlasted Cicero-North Syracuse’s Wyatt Dupell 7-5, 4-6, 6-3, and was one game from the finals before a third-set tie-breaker got away in a 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 defeat to Fulton’s Charles Hyland.
Somehow, Ruston shook off that disappointment and, in the third-place match against Baldwinsville’s Nick Licciardello, won in straight sets 7-6, 6-1.
Ryan Joyce, in first singles, beat Liverpool’s Brandon Davis 6-3, 6-4, but lost in the quarterfinals to Baldwinsville’s Antonio Marsallo 6-3, 6-1. Erik Shanahan lost his second singles match to Fulton’s Ryan Lalik 6-1, 6-1 as Lalik later claimed that title
