April 17, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

GA serves a loss to rebuilding Blue Devils
by TOM UTESCHER

CHA eighth-grader Nick Schreiber. For more photos of CHA vs. GA tennis, visit www.chlocalphotos.com. (Photo by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

In many high school tennis contests, there are one or two individual matches that are still going on well after the action on the other courts had concluded.

Unfortunately for host Chestnut Hill Academy, that wasn’t the case last Friday afternoon, when the visiting Patriots of Germantown Academy made short work of the Blue Devils. Winning every match in straight sets to claim a 7-0 victory, the Pats improved to 2-0 in the Inter-Ac League (they’d previously beaten Penn Charter) and 4-0 overall.

Friday’s setback, combined with an earlier loss to Haverford, resulted in an 0-2 record for CHA. The Blue Devils graduated two full-time singles players from last year’s team, and one other senior who saw action in both singles and doubles play. One of last year’s juniors, Will Griffin, also played singles in some matches, and this year he’s playing golf instead of tennis.

This has left Chestnut Hill with a squad that’s pretty inexperienced at the varsity level, and the Devils did not practice together over spring break. The Patriots spent part of their vacation tuning up at the Van Der Meer Tennis Center in Hilton Head, SC, and they’ve obviously hit the ground running for the start of the league schedule.

At first singles, senior Jared Teichman topped CHA eighth-grader Nick Schreiber, 6-2, 6-1, and in the second spot GA freshman Frank Tornetta was a 6-2, 6-3 winner over Ryan Duffy, a Blue Devil junior.

The Patriots captured three other contests by scores of 6-0, 6-1. At third singles, GA’s R.B. Grissa defeated fellow sophomore Dylan Ward, while at first doubles senior Jake Magerman and junior Pat Hayes beat CHA freshman Elliot Baxter and junior Steve Dandridge, and at second doubles Patriots junior Kerry Gallagher and sophomore R.J. Mirabile knocked off sophomore Robert Fink and freshman Andrew Moss of the host school.

Germantown’s fourth singles player, junior Matt Scheke, took two 6-0 sets from senior Matt Chang, and at third doubles senior Steve Silverman and junior Graham Kaltman gave GA a 6-0, 6-2 win over the CHA duo of junior Jonah Moss-Vreeland and freshman Nick DiDonato.