By Chris Chaney
Sun staff
A host of local boys tennis players knocked on the door of the district tournament last week across the various sectional tournament sites only to come up short of their goal.
Competing in Mason — either at the Comets middle school tennis complex or at the Lindner Family Tennis Center right up the road — student-athletes from Amelia, Batavia, Bethel-Tate, Felicity-Franklin, Glen Este, Goshen, Milford and New Richmond vied for one of the four coveted qualification spots available at each sectional.
With only two divisions sanctioned by the Ohio High School Athletic Association, the crowded brackets make tennis one of the most difficult sports to advance upstate.
In addition, the brackets are condensed down to one singles and one doubles bracket for each site.
Clermont County schools advanced three individuals and three doubles teams to the final eight to play for the right to advance to the district tournament, all in Division II — Felicity-Franklin’s Devon Denune and New Richmond’s duo of Joel Bird and Angus Matthews in singles and in doubles, Batavia’s team of Luke Herron and Luke Hacker as well as two doubles teams from Bethel-Tate, Adam Shinkle and Jacob Trabish and Ryen Beyer and Andrew Woudenberg.
While each individual and team came up against eventual district qualifiers, NR’s Bird fell to the eventual singles sectional champion, Asher Hirsch, and Bethel’s Beyer-Woudenberg fell to Cincinnati Country Day’s Shaheel Mitra and Vishal Nalagatla, who would win the doubles sectional.
Both Hirsch and Mitra-Nalagatla were the No. 1 seeds in the sectional.
Felicity’s Denune, the back-to-back Player of the Year in the Southern Buckeye Conference – National Division, was the only local player to win any games in the quarterfinal round, falling to third-seeded Andrew Pregel of Indian Hill, 6-1, 6-2.
In Division I, Milford managed to get a pair of individual wins and a doubles team victory in the Mason sectional.
Jack Eppers beat Marshall Patterson of Talawanda in the first round before falling to Aditya Venkitarama of Sycamore, 6-1, 6-0.
J. Kendall Morehouse defeated Ali Syed from Loveland, 6-3, 6-4. Morehouse fell to Vishnu Srinath of Mason in the second round.
In doubles, the Eagles team of Zach Jaquillard and Reed Spencer took down Princeton’s Josh Hardin and Andrew Vaaler, 6-3, 7-6 (4). Jaquillard and Spencer lost to Matt Benton and Noah Edwards of Kings in the second round.
Up the street at the ATP, Glen Este and Amelia struggled with the Barons doubles team of John McGraw and Seth Walker notching the area rep’s lone victory over fellow West Clermont School District rivals Jack Schmidt and Jon Leicht of Glen Este, 6-1, 6-2.
McGraw and Walker fell in the next round to eventual sectional runners-up, Connor Aronoff and Neil Bostick of St. Xavier in straight sets.
Complete sectional tournament results can be found at swdab.org.