DUBOIS \u2014 The field has been narrowed to two.<\/p>\n
On a day that felt much more appropriate for boys tennis action than many of their match days thus far have felt this season, 14 boys tennis players from across District 9 gathered at the DuBois Area High School courts on Monday afternoon to vie for the D-9 AA Singles Championships title \u2014 or at least for a spot in the final.<\/p>\n
As is typically the case with the tournament, Monday\u2019s Day 1 activities were only scheduled to include the first round, second round and semis, with the championships originally scheduled for today. That schedule has been adjusted, though.<\/p>\n
With the need for the team tournament to be completed by the end of the week \u2014 and with the forecast not looking so promising as the week progresses \u2014 the decision was made to move the team semifinals (originally set for Wednesday) to today. The remainder of the postseason schedule will be filled in as decided.<\/p>\n
Regardless, Monday\u2019s results are officially in the books, and those who remained in the running for the singles title at day\u2019s end were top-seeded sophomore Gavin Henry of St. Marys \u2014 recently named the District 9 Central League MVP \u2014 and Bradford\u2019s Cooper Haight.<\/p>\n
Henry\u2019s day began with a bye through to the second round, where he met Elk County Catholic junior Julian Lanzel, who had advanced through Round 1 by besting DuBois Central Catholic\u2019s Isaac Barber 10-4.<\/p>\n
Henry dispatched of Lanzel by a 10-2 margin, then met Punxsy senior Rocco Richardson in the semifinals. Henry won that match, which switched to best-of-three sets scoring, 6-1, 6-2, to secure his spot in the finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cGavin was very focused right from the warm-up,\u201d St. Marys Coach Tim Henry said. \u201cHe decided to go into lock down mode and play high-percentage, aggressive tennis. When he does this and can keep his focus the entire tournament like he did, it makes for a tough ask to beat him. Great command of himself mentally, and the game too. Fun to watch when he is in full flight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haight\u2019s road to the final started with a 10-4 victory over Brockway\u2019s Dominic Durle in the first round and continued with another win by the same margin over Abe Santos of Punxsy in the quarters. He then defeated St. Marys\u2019 second participant, Merrick Leckey, 6-4 and 6-3 to advance to the final.<\/p>\n
Richardsons\u2019 trek to the semis for the Chucks began with a 10-4 victory over Dorian Liberatori of Clearfield. Then, in the quarters, he bested Mason Close of Bradford by a 10-7 margin.<\/p>\n
Leckey\u2019s path was similar, as he won his first-round match against Clearfield\u2019s Aaron Williams 10-4 \u2014 a popular score for the day \u2014 then won by the same margin over DCC\u2019s Matthew Schoo (who had earned a bye through the first round).<\/p>\n
\u201cDutch tennis did well at the tournament,\u201d Coach Henry said. \u201cMerrick gave 100 percent to beat the two seed from DCC, but ran out of gas in the semifinal. Two matches that showed his growth as a tennis player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s schedule will now include only the team semifinals \u2014 DCC at St. Marys and Elk County Catholic at Bradford \u2014 with both scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBOIS \u2014 The field has been narrowed to two. On a day that felt much more appropriate for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-649232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}