New Palestine’s Moses Haynes flips the scorecard in his doubles match against Greenfield-Central.
Mike Brown | For the Daily Reporter
FORTVILLE — Playing in a sectional that includes only the four schools in Hancock County, there’s a sense of familiarity around the tournament for each of the teams.
For New Palestine and Greenfield-Central, that familiarity allowed them both to enter Wednesday’s Mt. Vernon Boys Tennis Sectional semifinal matchup with an idea of what to expect and an idea of where they needed to show improvement.
The Cougars showed improvement from an early-season matchup with the Dragons where they lost 4-1, and New Palestine showed improvement from the last time they took the court in the regular season.
It was the Dragons, though, advancing to the championship with a 3-2 win at Mt. Vernon on Wednesday evening.
“Greenfield’s a good team. They’re very competitive. We knew coming in that it would be a tough match, so we had to cut down on our unforced errors,” New Palestine head coach Jean Graham said. “We looked much better than we did the last time we played, but we’ve still got some things to clean up.”
Similarly to the regular season meeting between the two teams, the Dragons secured the team victory quickly with wins at both of the doubles matches and at No. 3 singles.
At No. 1 doubles, seniors Moses Haynes and Max Havel secured the first New Palestine point in just about an hour with a 6-0, 6-3 win over Greenfield-Central’s Nolan Frye and Kasen Jarnecke.
Shortly after they left the court, the No. 2 doubles team of Andrew Hahn and Carson Rush joined them with a 6-2, 6-1 victory against G-C’s Jacob Welch and Ethan Ortwein.
“Our doubles were very sharp,” Graham said. “Them getting off the court quick helps a lot and helps ease nerves.”
Senior Brady Torzewski earned the clinching point at No. 3 singles, defeating Lucas Sitzman 6-0, 6-2.
“It’s all about figuring out where we go from here. This is a tough sectional and just a tough county group this year. Everyone’s been very strong,” Greenfield-Central head coach Michael Turpin said. “We’ve got to keep working and getting better.”
In the remaining two matches, the Cougars came out on top.
Alex Michalek earned the first Greenfield-Central point with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Joey McPike at No. 2 singles, while the longest match of the night took place on the court beside him.
The winner of the team match may have already been decided, but at No. 1 singles, a battle was still taking place to see if Greenfield-Central sophomore Nathan Roberts would keep his season alive.
With the No. 1 players advancing individually with a win, the stakes remained high for Roberts and the Cougars late into the night.
In a match that lasted nearly four hours, Roberts defeated New Palestine senior Arjomand Khokhar 7-6 (7-3), 4-6, 7-6 (7-4).
After a tiebreaker win in the first set, Roberts fell down 3-0 quickly in the second set but bounced back to grab a 4-3 lead. The next three games went to Khokhar to set up a deciding third set.
In the final set, Roberts was on the brink of a season-ending loss down 5-3, but took the next two games.
After Khokhar grabbed a 6-5 lead, Roberts battled from behind again to tie things back up and force a tiebreaker.
This time, he jumped out to an early lead and carried that momentum into a 7-4 win.
“That’s tough to be out there after we had already lost the team match and for him to stay mentally tough enough on his own to keep fighting,” Turpin said. “He’s down in that third set and facing adversity and he just kept grinding and fighting. It just speaks to how tough of a player he is.”
A young Greenfield-Central team that lost four players from last year’s lineup ended the season 12-4 and showed Turpin that there’s a lot to build off of.
“We knew coming into the season that we had graduated a lot of guys and that this was going to be a tough year. Every single one of the guys rose to the occasion. We had an excellent season,” Turpin said. “It was a learning year, but the guys came out, played, and always did what they were expected to do. We fell short, but it was still 2-3 to a team we lost 4-1 to in the regular season. Very proud of how they looked tonight.”
New Palestine moves onto the championship where they’ll meet another familiar foe, Mt. Vernon. The Dragons were defeated by the Marauders 4-1 last Wednesday for their only Hoosier Heritage Conference loss.
They’ll get their chance for revenge beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.
“If we play our game, I think we’re a tough out. We played a bit flat last time we played Mt. Vernon, so we’re going to correct that and come out ready to go,” Graham said. “It’ll be a tough match though, no doubt.”
