Kids, Zephs close out regular season
Of the Spring sports, boys tennis is the first to start and the first to finish. Northampton and Whitehall closed out the EPC portion of their schedules on Monday in a rivalry match won by the K-Kids 5-1.
Pearce Foulk set the tone for Northampton at first singles with 6-2, 6-1 win over Nate Mak. Foulk described the contest, “We went to three sets last year, so I thought it was going to be kind of close again. We went back-and-forth to start, but I pulled ahead and that carried over to the second set. He was probably hitting harder than me, but the game plan was to get it back and let him make the mistakes.”
Foulk was 7-7 on the season and is on the bubble for qualifying for the league and district tournaments as a singles player.
The K-Kids’ Max Kochan won at second singles 6-3, 6-3 against Antoni Szlaslewicz.
Vincent Tran notched the Zephyrs sole point with a marathon 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 victory over Brett Bastian at third singles.
Northampton claimed second doubles with a 6-1, 6-3 win by Nick Reichel and Chace Roland against Peter Raffoul and James Kimble.
Third doubles also went the K-Kids’ way as Collin Enright and Reece Makary defeated Derek James and Tomek Karaski 6-3, 6-4.
First doubles was uncontested and Whitehall forfeited fourth doubles to Northampton.
Northampton is 7-9 for the season with a non-league match against Lehighton remaining. It looks like they will finish either 9th or 10th in the district standings, just out of the top 8 qualifiers for team districts, but a nice improvement over last year’s 5-12 finish.
Kids’ head coach Daniele Bowman summed up the season, “We improved over last year despite having a very young team. Pearce is our only senior and he played very well this season. We’re going to miss him. It will be interesting to see how these guys work on their games in the offseason and compete for that top spot on next year’s team.”
The Zephyrs are 3-13 with the result of a final match against Pen Argyl still pending. Head coach Bob Panny shared his thoughts on this year’s squad, “They’re a great bunch of kids. They don’t get much practice time. There were a lot of tough matches and they competed. Overall, it was a good season for a team with only 9 or 10 kids. They came to play every match.”