Doubles teams are like one big puzzle
Tri-State Sports & News Service
Sewickley Academy has been dominant in boys tennis with 15 consecutive WPIAL Class 2A team titles.
Although it might be perceived that the Panthers have just had dominant singles players in that time who carried them to their championships, it would be a huge leap. In its previous four trips to the finals, the team did have top-notch Division I players in the No. 1 and No. 2 slots in Luke Ross and Sam Sauter. But this time around, like so many others, they were led by a team-wide effort with the emphasis on strong doubles play.
“Doubles is where coaching actually comes in, with strategy, partnership, repetition, whereas most of the top singles players in Western Pennsylvania have their own coach and coach that individual so much of the time, you don’t have access to them,” Sewickley Academy coach Whitney Snyder said. “You have access to the doubles kids and, I enjoy teaching so it’s fun to see if this person will play well with that one and, if not, then, with whom will this person play well.”
It would be difficult to argue with his success.
Snyder is unlike many coaches in the WPIAL who await the results of the singles tournament before figuring out who will comprise their doubles entries into the sectional matches the following week. Instead, he has his top two singles players compete and, even if they don’t make it through to the state finals, they relinquish their opportunity to the No. 3 singles player and the four regular doubles players, who then comprise the two Sewickley Academy entries.
He has also used his top singles player in doubles, but only if he opts against playing in the singles tournament to concentrate on doubles in the WPIAL tournament.
This year, Sewickley Academy will send Will Nocito and Dylan Parda into the Section 4 tournament along with Cole Luther and Saarang Mulukutla as the team’s two representatives.
It would be difficult to argue with the Panthers success.
Though Sewickley Academy has won 15 consecutive team titles, more impressive might be that the team has also won eight consecutive doubles championships and have the only player, 2017 grad Ryan Gex, to have ever won four boys doubles titles in a row in either classification. Fox Chapel’s Amanda Nord, who finished out her four-peat in the fall, is the only one to do it on the girls’ side.
And it actually took two girls to interrupt that streak or it might be 10 years heading for 11. In 2009, Chartiers Houston’s Karli and Tanya Timko won the Class 2A boys doubles title and ousted a tandem from Sewickley Academy in the semifinals.
Class 3A
Hampton has both members of its second-place team back from last year in sophomore Ben Ringeisen and Ted Donegan, but they won’t be united until after the WPIAL singles championship.
They will likely be considered the favorite since the defending champion, Upper St. Clair senior Kevin Kwok, did not play for the Panthers this season and his partner, Liam Gibbons, graduated.
Fox Chapel, though, opted to put its doubles teams together before the sectionals so it would have time for its contingent to play together.
The WPIAL team champion Foxes will have their No. 2 singles player in Jared Nord team up with Karsten Lagerquist in one pairing and the team’s No. 1 unit of Kurran Singh and Jay Kashyap will take the other slot.
“It was something that we didn’t want to distract us during the team playoffs, but it’s something that we discussed during the two rain days,” Fox Chapel coach Alex Slezak said. “This was something we discussed as a team. This is not me being a dictator because the kids have an input there, too, and we thought this would be the best for everybody.”