April 13, 2006 Issue                                               

©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

CHA tennis rallies to pass GFS
by TOM UTESCHER

In his first match as varsity tennis coach at Chestnut Hill Academy, Larry Hyde guided the Blue Devils to victory. (photo by Tom Utescher)

Wins at first singles and in two doubles bouts had host Germantown Friends poised at victory with a 3-2 lead in last Thursday’s non-league tennis match, but visiting Chestnut Hill Academy pulled out the two singles matches still on the court to prevail, 4-3.

The contest was the season opener for the CHA Blue Devils and their new coach, Larry Hyde. Although well known for the summer sports camps he’s operated at the local school for the past 15 years, Hyde has not coached a CHA interscholastic team until now.

He inherited a squad that graduated two members of its 2005 roster last spring, but the most significant departure was that of an underclassman, Reid Carleton. Carleton was the Inter-Ac League champion at first singles as a freshman and a sophomore, but last summer his family relocated to Florida.

It’s not easy to lose what amounted to a guaranteed win on the top rung of the ladder each time out and, as Hyde noted, “it changes the whole dynamic of the team, with everybody bumped up one spot.”

Germantown Friends is coming off a successful 2005 campaign in which the Tigers made it to the Friends School League semifinals before losing to the eventual champion, Friends Central. A day before the CHA match, GFS launched its season with a 6-1 victory over Penn Charter. On Thursday, though, the Tigers had to adjust to a new wrinkle in their team line-up. They were missing freshman Nick Mancuso, who normally plays fourth singles. The vacancy was filled by the top singles player from the junior varsity, senior Gabe Esquezazi.

The third singles match was over quickly, as Chestnut Hill’s Mike Biggans won, 6-1, 6-0, over fellow junior Mike Nourie of GFS. Two more Germantown Friends juniors, Alex Hayes and Bryant Chung, took the measure of Blue Devil seniors Bob Goldman and Derek Winter at first doubles, 6-1, 6-4. In the second pairing, the Tigers prevailed again, with senior Todd Bustard and junior Packy Gordon gathering momentum in a 7-5, 6-2 win over the visiting twosome, freshman Ryan Duffy and sophomore Will Griffin.

Third doubles went to CHA though, thanks to freshman Justin Brown and junior Sam Winter, who defeated GFS sophomores Josh Cohen and Alex Jarvis, 6-1, 6-4.

At first singles, Germantown has a reliable veteran in senior Zach Barrett, who played his way into the Tigers’ top spot two weeks into his freshman season and remained there. CHA junior Cameron Silbert did not go down easy, but wound up losing a pair of 6-4 sets to Barrett, who’s headed to Vanderbilt University next year.

Germantown Friends was now up 3-2 in the match, and in second singles, sophomore Ben Gemberling-Johnson had gained a 6-5 edge in his first set against the Blue Devils’ Ian DeSantis. The CHA junior, who’d been up two games earlier in the set, won the 12th game to force a tiebreaker.

He won this segment, as well, closing it out at 7-5 when he stroked a ball that nicked the net and dropped down to the court. DeSantis had an easier time of it in the second set, wrapping things up at 6-2 to tie the team score at 3-3.

In the fourth spot, CHA senior Pat Davis had beaten Germantown’s Esquezazi, 6-3, in their opening set. Leading 3-2, on-serve, in the second set, Davis picked up a service break in the sixth game. Later, in the eighth, he reached another break point (also match point) at 30-40, then won the contest when a volley by Esquezazi didn’t make it over the net.