The Northampton boys tennis team braved a sub-40s windchill Saturday morning and got some key wins in tight matches to take their interleague contest against Bangor 4-3 to go to 2-0 on the young season.

Top singles player and lone senior Pearce Foulk fell behind 2-3 early against Jonathan Frank, but rallied to win in straight sets 6-3, 6-4. Foulke explained his key to victory, “I started to figure him out. He didn’t like to come to the net, so I tried to run him all round and beat him to the net.”

While team wins are important, head coach Danielle Bowman wants some individual recognition for Foulke, “One of our goals this year is to get Pearce to EPCs and Districts. He played as our number one last year too, so he faced a lot of the guys that will be there. He worked hard in the offseason so hopefully he’ll get a shot.”

At number 2 singles, sophomore Max Kochan was down a match point to Kaden Dowd at 4-5 in the third set, but he persevered to come back to win the final 3 games of the set and take his match 6-1, 1-6, 7-5. Kochan described his match, “I kind of pulled back thinking I could relax a little, but I couldn’t, he was pretty good. He stepped it up and started seeing my weaknesses. I kind of let it go there, but I came back.”

Connor Retlick and Dane Missmer beat Piotr Sulewsler and Josh Gallagher 6-1, 6-4 in their doubles match to claim the third point for the K-Kids.

Bangor’s wins came at third singles: Caleb Atkinson (B) over Josh Dorsey (N) 6-1, 6-2, second doubles: Hayden Burns and Justin McNeely (B) over Reece Makary and Nicholas Reichel (N) 6-3, 6-2, and third doubles: Evan Refulk and Reed Guerin (B) over Jad Samaan and Chace Roland (N) 6-4, 6-4.

This set up a winner-take-all doubles match between Foulke and Brett Bastian for the Kids and Frank and Dowd for the Slaters. The schools agreed to settle the match using an eight-game pro set, the first team to win 8 games and be up by at least two games would win the team point and the match.

The match was a back-and-forth affair as neither team ever led by 2 or more games. They reached an 8-8 deadlock and went to a 7 point tiebreaker. Foulke and Bastian won the tiebreaker 7-3 to secure the victory for Northampton.