CHA tennis nabs first Inter-Ac victory
by Tom Utescher

It was not a grand reward in any sense, but for two teams that had gone through most of the tennis season without a win in the Inter-Ac League, just a simple victory had become a coveted commodity.

Chestnut Hill Academy entered last Tuesday’s home match with an 0-7 record in the Inter-Ac (3-9 overall), while visiting Malvern Prep was 0-8 in league competition (3-8 overall). The host Blue Devils were the ones who were able to smash the goose egg in their win column, topping the Friars, 6-1.

In the first two singles matches to finish up, each school claimed a victory. Chestnut Hill’s sophomore number four, Andrew Moss, sailed past junior rival Paul Graham, 6-1, 6-0, but in the third spot Malvern picked up a win from senior Chris Pino, who won 6-3, 6-2, over a fellow upperclassman, the Blue Devils’ Steve Dandridge.

The only match of the day to reach a third set was the first singles bout between freshman Nick Schreiber of Chestnut Hill and Malvern junior Lenny Olsen. Schreiber dropped the first round, 2-6, but as the match wore on his pure persistence in chasing down difficult shots appeared to frustrate Olsen, and the CHA ninth-grader captured the second and third sets, 6-0, 6-1.

Down at the doubles venue (pairs play takes place on Springside School’s courts, a few hundred yards away from CHA’s facility along Willow Grove Ave.), Malvern put up a struggle but Chestnut Hill would eventually prevail in all three contests.

The Devils’ premiere pair of sophomore Elliot Baxter and junior Dylan Tracy won 6-4, 7-5 over a rival junior/sophomore combo, Malvern’s Chris Conway and Ian Kelleher. At third doubles, CHA junior Nick Auerbach and freshman Dean Kroker took a 7-5, 6-2 decision from junior Tom Parvesse and sophomore John Moran of the Friars.

The last doubles match on the court featured CHA’s second tandem of junior Rob Fink and freshman Crosby Harris. They won the first set, 6-4, but in the second they seesawed up to a 6-6 stalemate with Malvern junior Henry Smith and his partner, sophomore Rodger Graham. In a tiebreaker punctuated by several lively ping-pong volleys up at the net, Fink and Harris won, 7-5, to carry the set and the match.

Everyone then traipsed back up to the CHA courts to watch the final singles bout still in progress. This one also went to a second-set tiebreaker, following CHA junior Dylan Ward’s 6-2 victory in the opening set. In the breaker, Ward overcame Friars senior Andrew DiMarco, 7-4, winning match point with an overhead smash to the left rear corner.

UPDATE: In Inter-Ac matches later, Chestnut Hill lost to Haverford School, 0-7, the duplicated its earlier 6-1 over Malvern on Thursday, winding up with a league record of 2-8.