PORTLAND

One year ago, Mt. Ararat High School tennis player Nick Mathieu walked away as the runner-up in the Maine Principals’ Association Tennis Singles Tournament as a freshman, falling just short to Falmouth’s Brendan McCarthy in two sets, 6-1 and 6-2.

Mathieu, now in his sophomore year, entered the 2015 season determined to get back to where he was last spring, but this time aiming to come out as the MPA Schoolboy champion.

However, a tough battle against Waynflete’s Isaac Salas on Monday at the Racket and Fitness Club in Portland put Mathieu in the same situation, taking home the runner-up title once again after falling in two tough sets, 7-6 (5), 6-3.

“He played really well and it was a good match,” Mathieu said in regard to Salas. “He deserved to win, he outhit me. The points really did matter.”

“For one thing it was the resiliency, I mean just getting those tiebreakers,” Mt. Ararat boys’ tennis coach Don Foley said in terms of his No. 1 singles player’s performance. “The second tiebreaker could have gone the other way.”

Mathieu, who entered the tournament as the No. 1 seed, yielded only 10 points in 12 matches against opponents in the regular season. However, the sophomore experienced his toughest competition yet against Fryeburg Academy’s Teodor Antelj (No. 4 seed) in the semifinal round and Salas (No. 2) in the finals.

The first set against Antelj was forced to go to a tiebreaker as the Raider kept pace with Mathieu even after trailing, 5-4.

Mathieu won the set after a 7-5 performance in the tiebreaker. He then took a 6-4 set to complete the win and move on to the finals.

“I knew it was going to be a hard match,” Antelj said. “He’s a great player. I thought I had a chance, I thought I could win because my expectations were that big. Though I lost that first set I just forget about it and started from the beginning. I wasn’t that strong to finish the match well enough.”

The two found themselves in a 4-4 deadlock in the second set, but the Mt. Ararat sophomore managed to swipe the final two points to move on.

“I knew he was a good player going in,” Mathieu said. “I knew I was going to have to work hard to pull it out and win the first set, especially when it got to sixall.”

Salas had taken a pair of 6-3 sets against Lee Academy’s Luka Stevic in the semis to advance to the finals earlier in the day.

In the opening set of the final, Mathieu took a 2-1 advantage to start, but Salas managed to jump ahead, forcing his top-seeded opponent to play catch up the rest of the way.

Similar to the tiebreaker against Antelj, but the situation flipped, Mathieu managed to tie it at five-all and once more at six-all. After jumping out to a 3-1 lead in the tiebreaker, Salas surged back and the two battled to the very end until the Waynflete junior sealed it, 7-5.

The closest the two got in the final set was a 3-2 advantage in favor of Salas, but the Flyer pulled ahead and eventually swept the final point for the win.

“I know Nick and I’ve trained with him for a few years,” Salas said. “I hit with him a lot and I know his weapons — big forehand, big serve. I kind of came up with a strategy to move him along and hit it to his backhand and I tried to execute on those things.”

Mathieu appeared to find difficulty in the precision in his serve throughout most of the day, faulting on many of his first attempts, an item that Foley felt factored into his play.

“He missed the first serve a number of times,” he said. “He tried to put too much on it I think. But it’s extremely rare to go three (Schoolboy titles) in a row. I think that’s what he was looking at, but maybe go for two. He’s perfectly capable of doing it, because that’s his goal. I think he’s got a lot of motivation after this, and one of these years he’s going to do it. He’s right on the doorstep.”

“I’ll rebound, but I feel pretty (bad) right now. I’m not going to lie,” Mathieu said. “I’ll get better though, definitely.”

Mathieu will get back at it again on Thursday, as his Eagles open the Eastern Maine Class A playoffs at home with a quarterfinal matchup with Cony (4 p.m.). After the team competition, he will begin preparing for next season in an attempt to become the first Mt. Ararat Eagle to take home the schoolboys title since Mike Hill did it three years in a row between 2007-09.

In the schoolgirls championship, Falmouth’s Olivia Leavitt captured her thirdstraight title over St. Dom’s Bethany Hammond, taking the match, 6-4, 7-6 (1).