NHS Boys’ Tennis—

Hawks Bounce Back From Heartbreaker

By Andy Hutchison

The chances for an unbeaten season are gone, but Newtown High School’s boys’ tennis team continues to show why it should be among the favorites to challenge for a South-West Conference this spring.

Newtown’s May 7 match with Bunnell of Stratford came down to the final match of the afternoon — a dramatic three-set battle between Newtown’s Casey Tenney and Bunnell’s Mike Dolph. Tenney did a nice job of using his lob and occasionally mixing in a hard return in this tight match. Bunnell’s player prevailed 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 when his powerful return caught the top of the net and dropped just over to end an intense match between the conference foes.

“It’s a heartbreaking way to lose, but those are the breaks,” Newtown Coach Marty Margulies said. “They’re not demoralized. They know it could have gone either way and they know the next time we play them it could be a different outcome.”

The Nighthawks hope to have another chance against Bunnell in the SWC tournament, especially given how close this match was. Margulies said that if things go as expected down the stretch in the regular season, the two teams will match up in the conference tourney.

Bunnell swept the singles matches and Newtown won all three doubles matches with the No. 1 tandem of Colin Jacob and Connor Howell, the No. 2 duo of Rich Andreotta and Tyler Ruefenacht, and the No. 3 team of Cam McCleary and Ricky Fuentes all victorious in two sets.

The Nighthawks, who had beaten New Fairfield and Immaculate of Danbury each by 6-1 scores on May 5 and 6, won again by that decisive margin, 6-1, over Brookfield on May 10.

Margulies said the win over Brookfield was especially encouraging because the Hawks were missing Timo Roehrs, the top singles player, because of AP testing responsibilities.

“It showed that we are still focused on reversing the result against Bunnell if we meet them, as expected, in the SWC conference semifinals, and on winning the conference championship,” Margulies said.

Against Brookfield, Rob Beier won at No. 2 singles, Tenney won at third singles, and Sean Elliott won at fourth singles — each in two sets.

The aforementioned first and second doubles tandems won and Kiernan Lardner and Yoshi Kohrmann Glaser combined to win at third doubles.

Newtown went on to topple Notre Dame-Fairfield 7-0 on Tuesday with Peter Manos winning in the top singles spot. Hawks (10-1 heading into the middle of the week) remain in first place in regular season conference standings and are on target to earn the top seeding.