Freedom’s Noah Rodburg and Luke Braido were crowned Eastern Pennsylvania Conference boys tennis champions at two doubles after winning three matches at the EPC Tournament on April 20 at Freedom High School.

“It feels great,” said Braido, “and it just shows that we’ve been working hard and I feel like we deserved to come out on top. We talked about being confident, staying aggressive, and keeping our cool.”

Braido and Rodburg clinched gold medals with a 10-4 victory over Nazareth’s Ishaan Patel and Logan Baltz in the two doubles final.

“We had a lot of good offensive shots and believed in ourselves,” said Rodburg. “We lost to them in the regular season. It feels great to have a couple losses in the season and then come out on top in EPCs.”

The pair also defeated Easton’s Nick Ressler and Shahir Ali, 8-5, and Allentown Central Catholic’s Danny Petruno and Victor Manzella, 10-1.

As a team, Freedom placed second in the conference behind Liberty for the regular season.

Also at two doubles, Liberty’s Jacksen Jobes and Sid Tekumalla walked away with conference bronze.

The duo, who usually play with other teammates who were on a band trip, started the tournament with an 8-1 victory over Emmaus’s Ryan Baig and Quinn Durkin but lost to Patel and Baltz from Nazareth, 9-9 (7-5).

“The second match was disappointing because we were up 4-1 and they were able to come back,” Jobes said. “It was a 6-5, 7-6 kind of thing. They kept going up one, and we kept coming back. Then we were up in the tiebreak, 5-4, but we ended up losing. It went the whole way and it was a long match.”

That put Jobes and Tekumalla in the consolation match against Petruno and Manzella from Central where they initially played to another tie, 7-7, but won, 7-5.

“Really, it was our net play,” said Tekumalla. “We returned at the base line and attacked at the net. That was how we won most of our points.”

The Hurricanes welcomed the opportunity to medal as a first-time pair.

“We were so gassed from our match with Nazareth, but in the end, we were able to push through,” said Jobes. “I’m glad we were able to medal today. It is disappointing that we didn’t get first, but I don’t play with Sid in the regular season, so it was a special chance I got to play with him today.”