Mounties Outlast Bromfield in Sweet 16
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Mount Greylock boys tennis team Tuesday won its first two singles matches in a little over an hour, dropping three games between them.
The rest of the day was more of a struggle.
But the Mounties pulled out three more clutch wins to beat Bromfield, 5-0, and advance to the Division 4 State Quarter-Finals.
Fourth-seeded Mount Greylock (16-2) advances to host the winner of Wednesday’s match between Manchester Essex and Sturgis Charter West.
After No. 1 Tate Carothers and No. 2 Oscar Heeringa dispatched their opponents with relative ease, the remaining matches had the spectators ringing the fence at the Williams College tennis courts on the edges of their (proverbial) seats.
The winning point was secured by the first doubles tandem of Walter Love and Nico McWeeny, but only after they were up a set and 5-2 in the second only to see their opponents from Bromfield storm back.
The Trojans won the next two games and had two game points to tie the set in the 10th game.
But McWeeny and Love each put away a point at the net to stay in the game, which they eventually won to secure their match and the team win.
“They’re a super fun team to play,” McWeeny said. “It always feels great when you get to be the decider. There’s always a little pressure, but then you feel really good afterwards.”
Love and McWeeny may have felt a little added pressure after what transpired on the adjoining court, where their teammates Max Wied and Anders Tainter were on the verge of being the deciders, up a set and 5-2 in the second in their No. 2 doubles match.
But Bromfield’s Roman Muller and Art Samsi came all the way back to win that set in a tie-breaker and force a third.
Tainter and Wied ended up fighting off a match point in the 10th game to get to 5-5. They then used that momentum to close out a 6-4, 6-7(4-7), 7-5 victory in the final match to come off the court.
At third singles, Mount Greylock’s Keaton Repetto won a tight match with Bromfield’s Hakeem Tate, who won, 6-3, in the second to force a deciding set. With the team match already settled at that point, the pair played a super tiebreak, which Repetto won, 10-7.
Even though the scores of the first two singles matches were lopsided, both Carothers and Heeringa were tested.
Heeringa pulled away by finding the right strategy against Bromfield’s Michael Mao.
“He had a lot of great ground strokes,” Heeringa said. “I think the one thing that helped separate me was just getting to the net. That helped a lot. I think I won a high percentage of points at the net.
“I [generally] like to get to the net a lot, but I also change up my play style based on the opponent a lot. Sometimes I’ll lob a lot more. Sometimes I’ll try to be more aggressive. … Within the first three or four games, I can usually get a sense of how I need to play the rest of the match.”
Of course, competitive though they were, the singles matches lacked the drama of the doubles, including the two-set clincher at first dubs.
“I don’t think we needed to regroup,” Love said of the team’s mindset when Bromfield came back late in the second set. “I feel like we were just putting more of our balls out than we should have. I think we just started putting them back in, and that really helped.
“I probably put too much power on a couple of shots, and then I’d put too much afterward after I missed it.”
“It was an emotional match,” McWeeny continued. “We’re excited. This is the farthest we’ve been – at least in my time here. So it’s exciting to have this opportunity, and every shot really feels like it counts a lot, and sometimes you overplay them. But, in the end, we really were just able to bring it in and hit our shots. And it was great.”
Singles
No. 1 Tate Carothers, MG, def. Evan Burek, 6-0, 6-1.
No. 2 Oscar Heeringa, MG, def. Michael Mao, 6-1, 6-1.
No. 3 Keaton Repetto, MG, def. Hakeem Tate, 7-5, 3-6, (10-7).
Doubles
No. 1 Walter Love/Nico McWeeny, MG, def. Donovan Smith/Otavio Medina, 6-4, 6-4.
No. 2 Max Wied/Anders Tainter, MG, def. Roman Muller/Art Samsi, 6-4, 6-7(4-7), 7-5.