Peters duo pulls big upset
Peters Township has never won a WPIAL Class AAA team tennis title, but that does not mean the Indians are incapable of pulling off an upset every now and then.
On Monday, the Peters Township doubles team of Miguel Ascencio and Ryan Farrell knocked out the top-seeded Kann brothers, Cooper and Michael, of Shady Side Academy, 11-10 (7-5), in a pro-set format match in the second round of the tournament.
Not only did it give the Indians tandem a shot at qualifying for the state doubles tournament, it effectively ended an impressive sevenyear run in which Shady Side Academy sent at least one representative to either the PIAA singles or doubles finals.
“I thing they just played really well and, there’s a lot pressure, but
they just handled it better toward the end,” Peters Township coach Brandy Bowman said. “I told them at the sectional tournament finals that, if they win this match, they’d have a chance at WPIAL [title] and maybe make it to states.”
Peters Township lost that section final and ended up as the No. 8 seed in the WPIAL tournament.
Ascencio and Farrell made the most of their opportunity, however, as they knocked off Kevin Lee and Turner Price of Penn-Trafford in the first round, 10-5, before they pulled off their marathon upset of the Shady Side Academy tandem in the second.
“They’re only sophomores, so that’s really good for them,” Bowman said.
“I think it just helps them and gives them a lot of confidence beating a No. 1 seed.”
One thing they couldn’t do was parlay that success into a berth in the PIAA tournament.
They lost Monday in the semifinals at The Club in Monroeville, 6-2, 6-1, to the Mars Area duo of Josh Raymundo and Aaron Gruber then, in the consolation match on Tuesday at Norwin, they battled secondseeded Dane Bendel and Charlie Strohl of Mt. Lebanon, a semifinal upset victim themselves against Richard Hoffmann and Jared Isaacs of North Allegheny, and lost in two extremely tight sets, 7-6 (7-3), 76 (7-3), in blustery conditions.
This was the first time since 2006-07 that the WPIAL had three representatives in the state tournament as the PIAA, as part of its biennial realignment, made an alteration to the preset bracket this year.
Even without taking advantage of the additional slot and qualifying for the state playoffs, however, Ascencio and Farrell can take what they learned of playing high-stress matches and use that to help Peters Township as the Indians head into the WPIAL team tournament, which could begin as early as next week.
Regular-season matches are slated to end next Monday with the team tournament bracket to be released soon after.
Peters Township has not clinched a spot in the tournament as of yet, but they are still in line for one of the four available spots up for grabs in Section 4-AAA.
Still, winning a match like that against a topseeded opponent will certainly do quite a bit for the confidence of the two sophomores and could have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the team as they head into a key non-section match against North Allegheny today.
“We’re pretty young and we’re pretty deep and it’s probably one of the better teams that I’ve had in a while,” Bowman said.
“We haven’t made it to the semifinals of the team tournament in a while [2005], so maybe this is the year we can do it if we can win some of these [section] matches and get a better seed.”