Fox Chapel falls, 3-2, to old nemesis
Decisive match is a thriller at No. 1 singles
HERSHEY, Pa. — Fox Chapel appeared to be in the perfect position to advance to its first PIAA Class 3A championship match in three years.
A semifinal win would knock out Great Valley, the Chester County school that had ended the Foxes season in the quarterfinals the past two years. The Foxes’ hopes rode on the racquet of No. 1 singles player Robby Shymansky, the top-ranked senior in the state and a Yale recruit.
“There’s nobody that we would rather have and Robby Shymansky has carried this team the last four years,” Fox Chapel coach Alex Slezak said.
And that was where Fox Chapel’s season came to an abrupt end.
Great Valley didn’t have any ordinary player facing Shymansky, it had the defending Class 3A singles champion and Penn recruit Sameer Gangoli. And in the matchup of future Ivy Leaguers, the junior outlasted Shymansky in a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) thriller Saturday at Hershey Racquet Club that gave Great Valley a 3-2 victory and vaulted it into the state final for the third consecutive year.
“He’s gave us his heart and that’s all that we can ask for,” Slezak said.
Fox Chapel No. 3 singles player Milo Baron and No 1 doubles team of Jay Kashyap and Brandon Wei won their matches with relative ease, while No. 2 singles player Jared Nord and No. 2 doubles team Shan Hassan and Clay Quackenbush dropped their matches in straight sets.
That left Shymansky on the court against Gangoli in the only semifinal match in either classification that went three sets. The two broke each other’s serve in each of the first three games with Shymansky holding a 2-1 lead. He was up a break until the eighth game, when Gangoli broke back and the two rode it out into the tiebreaker.
It was the first team tournament match Shymansky lost since the 2016 state final. And it could be a precursor to the PIAA Class 3A singles final next week as Shymansky and Gangoli are on opposite sides of the bracket.
“We’ve lost to Great Valley three years in a row now and we can’t get over that hump of Great Valley,” Slezak said. “We were really close this year.”
Class 2A
Indiana senior Joey Bujdos was in an extremely tight match against Pequea Valley’s Devon Clemmer in No. 2 singles in the PIAA Class 2A boys team semifinals.
Back and forth they battled until finally the two took the first set into a tiebreaker where Bujdos finally closed it out for a 1set-to-0 lead. That was when they stepped to the side of the court to take a break before resuming the match and beginning the second set.
Only they never took the court again.
During the time it took for Bujdos to win the first set in a tiebreaker, Indiana lost both doubles matches and its No. 3 singles to lose to Pequea Valley, 3-1.
“I figured that would be close, but it would have been nice to win a first set,” Indiana coach Phil Palko said. “I think my kids were just really nervous.”