Newtown High Boys’ Tennis Team Ends Barlow’s Run

By Andy Hutchison

In Marty Margulies’ ten years of coaching at Newtown High School, his boys’ tennis teams had never found a way to beat South-West Conference rival Joel Barlow. On April 8, in the team’s season-opener at Treadwell Park, a new page was turned.

The Nighthawks not only ended a decade-long period of Barlow dominance, they did so in convincing fashion, rolling to a 6-1 win.

Talk about a good start to the season.

“It’s a very good omen at the beginning of the season,” Margulies said.

This was not counted as a conference match and the two teams will meet again on April 20, at Barlow, in a match that will count in the conference standings. This was still a very significant win, one that the Nighthawks hope set the tone for a successful campaign.

“It feels fantastic. We really played as a team today. We’ve got a lot of camaraderie this year. I like where we’re going,” said senior captain Adam Wenick, who won a competitive two-set match over Barlow’s Charles Lillicraf, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3, in the No. 1 singles position.

Fellow senior captain Evan Batzer won at No. 2 singles, sweeping past Drew Crannell, 6-2, 6-1. Barlow got its only win at No. 3 with Joseph Tomenga defeating Newtown’s Timo Roehrs 7-6 (7-5), 6-1. At No. 4, Peter Manos defeated Chris Bidermann 6-1, 6-4.

In doubles play: the No. 1 duo of Casey Tenney and Joe Cappiello defeated Blake Kramer and John Montgomery, 6-0, 6-2; No. 2 Colin Jacob and Rob Beier defeated Alex Coleman and Sean Hanczor, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5; the No. 3. team of Connor Howell and Rich Andreotta defeated Harry Wheeler and Casey Roag, 6-0, 6-3.

“It’s great. It really shows me how strong our team is this year,” Batzer said. “I have a pretty good feeling about the next two years we’re going to have here.”

That’s because of group of strong underclassmen, including Beier, a freshman.

“It’s nice to play. It’s nice to be a part of something like this,” Beier said.

The Nighthawks lost 4-3 at Pomperaug in another nonconference match against a conference opponent on Monday. Margulies said it was an encouraging performance against a team that was second-best in the SWC a year ago (behind Weston), especially considering the Nighthawks were without Batzer, who was unavailable for this match.

The match was ultimately decided by a three-set marathon at second doubles.

Because of Batzer’s absence, Roehrs and Manos moved up one spot to second and third singles, respectively, and Jacob, shifted out of his doubles spot to win at No. 4 singles (he defeated Kyle Richardson 3-6, 6-4, 6-0). For the second consecutive match, Andreotta filled in with a win at third doubles, joining Beier to defeat Mitch Horn and Brian Westerman 6-3, 6-1. Tenney and Cappiello had another successful first doubles outing, defeating Andrew Gravecz and Shryan Apalaraju 6-0, 6-4. Wenick put a scare into his No. 1 singles opponents, Joe Shannon, before falling in three sets as Pomperaug improved to 2-0 overall.

 “All of us are looking forward to the conference rematch against Pomperaug later in the season, when I hope we will be ready with a full lineup,” Margulies said in anticipating of the May 18 season-finale. “Whatever the outcome of that rematch, we proved [Monday] and against Barlow that we are a serious contender for the top spots in the SWC.”

Newtown was scheduled to host Stratford on Wednesday (after The Bee sports section went to press) and, following the Barlow rematch, will host Notre Dame-Fairfield on April 21.