It was sailing weather April 23, as wind whipped the nets at Rye Recreation Park. Instead, Harrison and Rye were playing tennis, and what a match it was.

 

By Mitch Silver

It was sailing weather April 23, as wind whipped the nets at Rye Recreation Park. Instead, Harrison and Rye were playing tennis, and what a match it was.

Playing side by side on hard courts 7 and 8, Rye’s top two singles players, Andrew Emanuel and James Reid, fought both the Huskies and the gusty breezes. At number one, Harrison’s Matt Miles played better in the rough weather, gliding to a 6-1, 6-2 victory. Ten feet away, Garnet James Reid was also a straight set winner over Tucker Martino, 6-3, 6-4.

“You have to move your feet, especially in the wind,” Reid said afterwards. “With it whipping around, you’ll hear a lot of squeaking of tennis shoes from the good players as they make last-second adjustments.”

Rye’s top doubles team of Kosuke Tremonte and Rishi Shah looked to be sailing to a quick win after taking the first set, 6-1. But a wind-aided stroke meltdown midway through the second let the Harrison pair of Josh Kaidanow and Adam Kozek even it at 6-6. When they fell behind in the tiebreaker, the Rye boys had one thing on their minds.

“We told ourselves, we have to beat them to the net,” Rishi said. And so they did, pulling out the tiebreaker and the match, 7-5.

With Mihir Bala and John Emanuel dropping their second doubles match 4-6, 4-6 and the Garnets third tandem of Ward Urban and Will Bennett doing the same at 3-6, 2-6, the pressure was on Rye’s No. 4 doubles to come through. Andrew Burke and Tommy O’Brien made it look easy, 6-1, 6-1.

That left the match on freshman Alex Tretiak’s racquet at No. 3 singles. Though he dropped the first set 2-6, Tretiak climbed back into the match, forcing a second-set tiebreaker with both squads and a few parents looking on. A win now would force his contest with Harrison’s Adam Alper into a super tiebreaker, and with it the entire outcome for the day. Sadly for the Garnets, Tretiak’s efforts were not enough as he dropped the tiebreaker 7-5 to the older, bigger player.

A day earlier, Rye lost to league power Horace Greeley 5-2. Tretiak was the Garnets’ singles winner, 6-1, 7-5 and the Burke-O’Brien pair came through again, 7-5, 6-4.

Coach Sue Dickson’s charges hoped to duplicate their early-season win over Briarcliff when they traveled to take on Keio Academy post-press time.