Whether playing in singles or doubles, area high school boys tennis teams claimed a sweep of the top spots during the Section III state qualifying tournament held earlier this week.
Jamesville-DeWitt star Peter Hatton did not lose a set on his way to the singles championship, while in doubles Christian Brothers Academy had Ben and Dean Vlassis win a pair of local duels to finish first.
Having already won two matches in the early rounds May 22 at Utica Parkway, the Vlassis brothers met Fayetteville-Manlius stars Rohan Dhawan and Riley Ma in an epochal semifinal.
It went three sets, with the Vlassis brothers prevailing 6-3 in the first, but dropping the second 6-4. However, in the third set the CBA pair took over, blanking Dhawann and Ma 6-0.
Meanwhile, J-D’s duo of Essex Glowaki and Dhruv Nanavati was sweeping toward the finals and a state tournament berth, dropping just three games in the first two rounds and then running over West Genesee’s Matt Mannara and James Plunkett 6-1, 6-1 in the semifinals.
However, Glowaki and Nanavati were no match for the Vlassis brothers, who swept them 6-1, 6-0 in the championship round at Nottingham High School.
Dhawan and Ma earned the third state tournament berth by beating Mannara and Plunkett 6-0, 7-6, perhaps a bit of revenge after WG ended F-M’s 267-match win streak a week earlier.
While all this was going on, Hatton was running over the singles field. In his first two matches, against Auburn’s William Clark and Manlius-Pebble Hill standout Dan Braverman, Hatton did not lose a game in four total sets.
Only the semifinal proved a bit challenging for Hatton, who still rolled past Baldwinsville’s Antonio Marsallo 6-4, 6-2, setting up a final where he got a third 6-0, 6-0 shutout to beat Mexico’s Joe Ocker.
Marsallo had, in the round of 16, ousted J-D’s Mark Bratslavsky 6-2, 6-3, and he would go on to beat Vernon-Verona-Sherrill’s Jacob Starke by those same scores for third place to join Hatton and Ocker in the state tournament field. Braverman had won, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, over Cicero-North Syracuse’s James Corl before falling to Hatton.
Elsewhere in doubles, MPH’s Anthony Pitts and Harry Xu lost, 6-3, 6-1, to Cicero-North Syracuse’s Johnathan Corl and Brandon Millias, with F-M’s Ben Farber-McEntee and Andy Sun taking a 7-6, 6-0 defeat to Oneida’s Aidan and Ajay Hicks.
