Having roared through local competition all season, the Fayetteville-Manlius boys tennis duo of Taran Judge and Riley Ma would make a serious push at the biggest prize of the spring on the country’s most famous tennis stage.
Judge and Ma entered the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships as the no. 5 seed in the doubles bracket as everyone gathered at the USTA-Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens.
It could not have started better on Thursday morning as Judge and Ma did not drop a game against New Paltz’s Noah Kalus and Isaac Cheruiyot in a 6-0, 6-0 victory.
Moving to the round of 16, Judge and Ma advanced further than any other Section III state tournament competitor when they defeated Bethlehem’s Connor Brandon and Lleyton Emery 6-0, 7-5.
Now, though, it would get tougher. In Friday’s quarterfinals, Judge and Ma faced the top seed, Mamaroneck’s Charlie Levinson and Connor Aylett, who had dropped just four games in their first two matches.
And here, the same thing happened, Levinson and Aylett surrendering just four total games as they ended Judge and Ma’s state title run in a 6-2, 6-2 decision. A day later, Levinson and Aylett won the state title, rallying in three sets to beat Luke Smith and Nikolay Sahakyan (Scarsdale) 2-6, 6-1, 6-4.
Elsewhere in doubles, the Jamesville-DeWitt duo of Essex Glowaki and Dhruv Nanavati led early against Dean and Liam Redmond (Warwick), only to take a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 defeat. This moved them to the consolation bracket against Aidan and William O’Brien (Albany Academy), where they lost, 6-3, 6-3.
In the singles state tournament, J-D’s Peter Hatton and Christian Brothers Academy’s Dean Vlassis both would go 1-1 in their respective efforts.
Vlassis had a memorable opening-round match. On the brink of defeat against no. 5 seed Matthew Vashin (Cold Spring Harbor), Vlassi somehow rallied to win a second-set tie-breaker and then dominate the final set in a 5-7, 7-6, 6-0 decision, But Vlassis had little left for his round-of-16 match, where he withdrew in the second set against Keio’s Ryo Sakai.
Hatton would also win his first-round match, fighting hard in both sets to take out Orchard Park’s Noah Sayoc 6-4, 6-4. And he would also take a round-of-16 loss, though he gave no. 3 seed Ethan Jacobs (Clarkstown North) a good battle in a 6-4, 6-3 defeat.
