AUBURN — The St. Dominic Academy boys’ tennis team took care of bussiness early in their Class C South quarterfinal matchup against North Yarmouth Academy on Wednesday.
The Saints won the first set in all five matches en route to a 4-1 victory.
“Winning the first set always eases in anxiety that we may have, but it’s always a matter of coming out equally as hard for the second set,” St. Dom’s coach Andrew Girouard said.
For the Panthers, the season as a whole was a good step in the right direction.
“We did much better than we were expected (to do),” NYA assistant coach John Beuche said. Head coach Charlie Hudson was out of town.
“We are pretty proud of what we did,” Beuche added. “We are looking forward to next year because we have so many freshmen.”
Three of MYA’s seven athletes Wednesday were freshmen.
The first match to finish was the No. 2 singles contest between Sam Blaisdell of St. Dom’s and Markus Russell of NYA. Blaisdell took the first set 6-2, but Russell went up 3-0 in the second set before Blaisdell won six of the next seven games to take the set 6-4.
“I was staying patient in the first set and I wanted to hit my (winning points),” Blaisdell said. “The big thing I was staying patient, hitting the shots I usually make. At the end, when I thought it was a good time, I hit my winners.”
Shortly thereafter, the second doubles match concluded as the Saints’ Cliff Greco and Elliot Hachey improved their record on the year to 14-0 with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Parker Elkins and Abram Buehner.
With the Saints up 2-0, the Panthers started to take sets.
In the first doubles match, Henry Briggs and Daniel McVicar took the second set 6-4 in their match against Cam Jalbert and Matt Boulet, who took the first set 6-3.
Jalbert and Boulet came back to win the third, 6-2.
“NYA is always a tough team for us,” Girouard said. “Usually, come playoffs, they usually knock us out. Trying to keep the momentum from the first to the second set was paramount. We were able to hold onto it on some of the matches and we lost it on some of the others going into the third set.”
The match of the day was the third singles match between Josh Soucy of NYA and Drew Greco of the Saints. After Greco won a marathon of a first set that lasted 55 minutes, 7-5, Soucy came right back and won the second set 6-0.
Soucy looked to make quick work of Greco in the third getting out to a 4-1 lead, but Greco brought it to a tiebreaker, where Soucy prevailed, 7-6 (7-5) to pick up the Panthers’ lone point.
“I think it was unforced errors, but I got tired,” Soucy said of Greco’s comeback. “Also, I was getting frustrated because I was making the errors and I kept looking at winning the set. I had to look at winning each point individually.”
Noah Toussaint, the Saints’ top singles player, won his match, defeating Hunter Mahoney 7-5, 6-2.
The second-seeded Saints will await the winner of Hall-Dale and Winthrop in the regional semifinal round.
nfournier@sunjournal.com
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