LEWISTON

For the second time in as many years, the boys tennis teams of Mt. Ararat and Falmouth High Schools met up in the Class A State Championship.

A year ago the Yachtsmen pulled out a 3-2 win over the Eagles, and once more Falmouth’s talented squad was able to celebrate a victory, beating the Eagles 4-1 at Lewiston High School on Saturday.

“ They’re just so consistent,” Eagles’ head coach Don Foley said about Falmouth. “ They’re really good, it’s a good team, a very good team. We thought we had a chance. We played them last year and thought we had a chance this year, but that wasn’t to be. They just reload and they’re so young.”

Once the matches got under way it appeared that Mt. Ararat had the upper hand as No. 2 singles player Peter Mao, No. 3 singles Trevor Mayo, and the No. 1 doubles pairing of Jon Roux and Mike Crawford all took the first game, but the momentum quickly shifted.

Mao battled back and forth with Alex Klemperer to a 3-3 tie, but Klemperer swiped the last three games to take the first set, 6-3. In the second set, Mao had difficulty all the way through as the Yachtsmen No. 2 won all six games for a 6-0 sweep and the first Falmouth team point.

The No. 2 doubles duo of Joey Reed and Leonardo Medeiros experienced hardship throughout most of the competition against Falmouth’s Matt Adamowicz and Grayson Cohen, dropping both sets by a score of 6-1.

In both instances, Reed and Medeiros kept both sets close at 3-1, but Adamowicz and Cohen capitalized on three more games to put the Yachtsmen up, 2-0.

“They got good serves in and had nice shots,” Medeiros, a senior foreign exchange student, said. “We just didn’t make the best of our opportunities and we ended up dropping a few games that we shouldn’t have in my opinion, but they were the best team.”

It became imminent that the Eagles were going to have to pull out something big in order to save the contest. Roux and Crawford had fallen 6-2 in the first set, while Mayo dropped 6-3 in his, therefore having to force a third set to save Mt. Ararat’s chance at winning in both instances.

However, Falmouth’s No. 3 singles player Peter Stegemann worked Mayo through just seven games, taking a 6-1 set to seal the deal for the Yachtsmen with the third and deciding points. Still, the No. 2 doubles and No. 1 singles matches were to be played to determine the final score.

Moments later, Roux and Crawford found themselves on the wrong side of a 6-2 second set, with Falmouth’s Jordan Bruce and Trey Fallon giving their team its fourth point of the day.

“We started off really good, I mean we won the first game in both sets,” Roux said. “ But, after that there were a couple of tough calls on Falmouth’s end that kind of got in our heads. There were rules we didn’t know, so that got to us in the first set and once that ended the second set kind of went down hill.”

One strong suit that appeared to favor the No. 1 Yachtsmen doubles team was the ability to finish on the short volleys, something that Roux believes played a factor.

“It goes into our shots in the end,” he said in terms of adjusting. “We try to lob it and then we miss it and hit it too low and they just smash it down. A lot of times it was mistakes on our parts, which led to very easy shots for them. We had a couple of chances, which we didn’t finish because we didn’t hit hard enough.”

Nick Mathieu

Despite Falmouth already securing the title, the No. 1 matchup of Eagles’ Nick Mathieu and Yachtsman Aidan McGrory was in progress.

The two battled back in forth the entire time, with the first set going to a tiebreaker. Mathieu took it 7- 6, with a tiebreaker score of 7-1.

It appeared that McGrory was going to force a third set tiebreaker, but Mathieu held on after falling behind 5-4 to capture a 7-5 win and the sole point for the Eagles.

“Well I honestly think it came down to just a few points,” Mathieu said. “It was so close the entire time and it could have been anybody at anytime during that match. Falmouth is a very tough team, they’re very good. We sort of expected it coming in and I think we worked hard and gave our best effort even though we didn’t come out on the right end.”

The Eagles finish the season with an overall 14-2 mark, while notching their second straight year as the State Class A runners-up and Eastern A champions, accomplishments that made the whole team proud.

“I was really happy with that, because I wasn’t playing tennis in Brazil,” Medeiros said in regard to a state championship run in his first and only year with the Eagles. “I had the opportunity to come here and play tennis with these guys. Nick is a very good player, Trevor and Peter as well in terms of ours singles. I was really happy with that.”

“It’s been great, I just started last year,” Roux, who is a senior captain and recently graduated. “I loved it, being able to go to states two years in a row and being part of the team. It’s great and it’s a sport I’ll keep playing.”

“We’ve had more people than we’ve ever had,” Foley said of the season. “We kept everyone together more or less. The people that started were the people that finished. Nick kind of saved our face (today) and he made our season to begin with. He just continued right here and there’s no way he was going to lose.”

Falmouth 4,
Mt. Ararat 1

At Lewiston High School
State Class A Boys Tennis Championship Nick Mathieu (MtA) over Aidan
McGrory, 7-6 (7-1), 7-5.
Alex Klemperer (F) over Peter Mao, 6-
3, 6-0.
Peter Stegemann (F) over Trevor
Mayo, 6-3, 6-1.
Jordan Bruce and Trey Fallon (F) over
Jon Roux and Mike Crawford, 6-3, 6-
2.
Matt Adamowicz and Grayson Cohen
(F) over Joey Reed and Leonardo
Medeiros, 6-1, 6-1.
Final records — Falmouth 15-1, Mt.
Ararat 14-2.
Note — Mt. Ararat’s season is complete after second consecutive State
A runners-up finish.