Being swept in four straight regular-season matches is a tough pill to swallow for any high school boys’ tennis team.
Although the Bridgewater-Raritan High School boys’ tennis team found themselves in such a skid while navigating one of New Jersey’s toughest schedules, the Panthers have instead used humbling experiences such as this as motivation to learn from their mistakes, improve in their tennis games, and right the ship heading into the final month of the regular season.
Under the guidance of second-year head coach Evan Rosenberg, that perseverance was rewarded on Monday, April 28, in a thriller against Hopewell Valley Central High School.
After taking two of its first three courts against Hopewell Valley (5-4), Bridgewater-Raritan (2-7) found itself needing to win on at least one of its two remaining courts to snap its four-match losing streak. To cap off an exciting evening that saw both of these final two courts go to decisive third sets, Hopewell Valley juniors Kaito Mahon and Andrew Hou rallied to triumph in game two before winning the ensuing third set in first doubles against Panthers senior Nicholas Brauchle and junior Devon Patel.
On the remaining of five courts, junior Gurucharan Mannur simultaneously found himself in a similar 10-point tiebreak after falling in a tight game two against Hopewell Valley freshman Amal Parikh.
Mannur immediately bounced back with 10 of this final set’s 14 points to clinch a 3-2 match victory and the season’s first home victory for Bridgewater-Raritan at the Green Knoll Tennis Center in Bridgewater.
“He was playing pretty well,” praised Mannur’s match-clinching victory by Bridgewater-Raritan senior Sid Balasubramanian, who opened the evening with a 6-2, 6-3 victory in first singles against Hopewell Valley junior Eshaan Doshi. “Once in a while, he was making little mistakes and giving his opponent hope in the tiebreak. He’s definitely improved as the season has gone on, so I’m looking forward to him leading the team next year.”
“Our season has been pretty tough, and we’ve been playing against a lot of the top teams and players in the state, so it was good to finally get into the win column again today.”
Hopewell Valley sophomore Danyal Rizavi defeated Bridgewater-Raritan senior Brandon Wu in second singles by a score of 6-0, 6-2, but both schools ultimately split what ended up being two close doubles matchups. In second doubles, Bridgewater-Raritan seniors Aditya Shetty and Kanaya Mehta edged the duo of Hopewell Valley senior Zachary Weisenfeld and junior Manas Sinha by a score of 6-4, 6-4 to put the Panthers one court away from winning the match.
During Mannur’s eventual match-sealing 10-point tiebreak set, Brauchle and Patel also found themselves on the wrong end of a rally by the Bulldogs before being defeated by Mahon andHou by a final result of 4-6, 7-5, 10-3.
The Panthers improved their record to 2-7 after their victory. However, this mark is a deceiving one, particularly given all four of Bridgewater-Raritan’s remaining Skyland Conference Delaware Division rivals are currently ranked amongst New Jersey’s top boys’ tennis squads: No. 3 Pingry School No. 9, Ridge High School, and No. 13, Montgomery High School, and No. 20 Hillsborough High School.
Not only were the Panthers swept in each of their first regular-season matchups against each of these teams in April alone, including a second such defeat against Ridge in this span. All four of these squads were amongst a loaded Somerset County Tournament that was contested Friday, April 25, at host Pingry School in Basking Ridge.
Factoring all four of these teams finishing in the top five on Friday’s edition of the county tournament, including the fifth consecutive Somerset County Tournament crown by arch-rival Pingry, Bridgewater-Raritan took home an eighth-place finish as a squad on Friday while delivering a respectable showing in one of New Jersey’s most lethal tournament fields.
However, the road does not get any easier for Bridgewater-Raritan (2-7, 0-5), which will continue its second wave of Skyland Conference Delaware Division play against No. 20 Hillsborough (8-3, 2-3) next at 3:45 p.m. onTuesday, April 29. Then No. 13 Montgomery (4-5, 2-4) will then travel to Bridgewater next at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 1.