Indiana advances to Class 2A semifinals

Fox Chapel also gains final four in Class 3A

HERSHEY, Pa. — Indiana truly took the road less traveled to get to the PIAA Class 2A team finals.

Its top singles player, Zach Palko, tore off a nail in a first-round match Tuesday against Mercyhurst Prep that nearly cost the team the eastward trip in the first place. Then the team waited until after No. 2 singles player Joey Bujdos won a WPIAL Class 3A track title in the 3,200meter relay and opted to leave at 5 a.m. Friday to get to the Hershey Racquet Club for an 11 a.m. start.

If that wasn’t enough, Indiana coach Phil Palko was a nervous wreck, pacing back and forth on the top floor of Hershey Racquet Club and trying to monitor all five of his team’s individual matches at once.

“I’m not even sure because I definitely stress about it and try to take in bits and pieces of every match and figure out as much as I can and I might get one shot to talk to a player between sets,” Phil Palko said. “I put a lot of miles on and I think a lot of it is my nervous energy, but it makes it more fun.”

By the time his team finished with its quarterfinal match he definitely needed to take a deep breath. But his stress level may have hit an all-time high after the Little Indians pulled out a 4-1 victory against District 2 champion Wyoming Seminary to earn the school’s first berth in the state semifinals.

“I think that, when you see good teams that are evenly matched and they’ve all been evenly matched up to this point,” Palko said. “The state bracket, you can say one thing, you know what it is coming in.”

Playing when Indiana did allowed the team to sit through and watch the entire match between WPIAL runner-up Quaker Valley and District 3 second-place finisher and first-time state finalist Pequea Valley. The Quakers trailed the match, 2-1, but were up a set in both the No. 2 singles and No. 1 doubles matches, but the Braves forced a second-set tiebreaker in both, won both and went to a third set.

In the end, Pequea Valley pulled out a 3-1 victory — the doubles match went to a third-set tiebreaker and was stopped when the singles match ended to decide the outcome — to set up a date at 9:30 a.m. with the Little Indians.

“At this point, we’ve gotten this far and we’ll see what happens,” Palko said. “At least we know a little bit about them. Their No. 1 singles player, Brady Burns, is one of the few kids in the [Class 2A] draw that is a recognizable name for us, he has a Middle States ranking and he and Zach will have a good match.”

Indiana was the only WPIAL Class 2A team to move on as third-place finisher South Park dropped a 3-2 decision to District 3 champion and 2017 finalist Lancaster Country Day.

Shady Side Academy got perhaps the toughest draw it could have imagined as the Indians pulled reigning District 1 champion and 2018 PIAA Class 3A titlist Unionville. Though the match was delayed a bit because of the length of the Quaker Valley-Pequea Valley skirmish, Unionville pulled out a 4-1 victory to advance.

Fox Chapel had struggled the past three years with District 1 schools, losing to Lower Merion in the 2016 championship and to Great Valley in each of the past two years in the quarterfinals. But the Foxes ended their losing streak to the district when they pulled out a 4-1 victory against third-place finisher Conestoga to move into the semifinals.

Senior Jared Nord, who has lost in the state tournament in each of his past two matches against Great Valley, came up big with a clinching 6-3, 7-5 victory over Peter Auslander.

“It’s a great feeling, especially as a senior because I know this easily could have been my last match,” Nord said. “I fought hard and made sure it wasn’t.”

He did yeoman’s work in the process. With the second set tied, 5-5, Auslander was serving to take the lead. Instead Nord worked his way through nearly 20 deuces, staved off about 10 game points and finally broke to take a 6-5 lead before he served out the match.

“It was about split half and half, he had a lot of advantages, I had a lot of advantages and I finally closed it out,” Nord said. “The rest of the day, my serve had felt pretty good, especially my first serve and, I felt that if I won, I would have the momentum and that I would win to close it out.”