Martlets Defeat Wyverns

On a rainy Wednesday, we were glad to have the opportunity to still get in our match on Kingswood-Oxford’s indoor courts.  The K-O team wanted to play a non-standard 9-point match (with each match counting for one point, rather than having one collective doubles point), and due to the court limitations and tight match schedule, we played all matches as 8-game pro-sets with no-ad scoring and tiebreakers at 7-7.  The team rolled with all of those changes and came out with a decisive victory.  Will Jones ‘28 played against a skilled opponent who knew how to move Will around; however, Will noticed early on that he was winning with some aggressive net play, so after trading games for the first half of the set, Will turned a 4-3 lead into an 8-3 victory.  Jeff Niu ‘26 was close on his heels at #2 with an 8-4 victory, similarly sailing ahead after a closer start.  At #3, Calvin Bixby ‘28 took an early lead, heading up to 7-2 before a slight setback; however, he soon closed it out at 8-4.  At #6, Khang Ngo ‘27 had the quickest match of the day, with an 8-0 win, while Sam Herdeg ‘27 had a tougher time at #4, though he was ultimately able to take advantage of some of his opponent’s weaknesses, coming back from a 5-6 deficit to win 8-6.  Our only loss on the day was a tight 7-8 match at #5 — a hard-fought match by Issac Kwon ‘28 against a steady and very determined opponent.

At doubles, the steady team of Sonny Darnowski ‘28 & Rohan Satpathy ‘27 had a decisive 8-4 win at #1, while Tyson Mertz ‘27 & Caden Cramer ‘27, and Alessio Suarez ‘28 & Ryden Maeda ‘29 closed things out quickly at #2 (8-2) and #3 (8-1), respectively.  After two tough losses, this was a nice opportunity to rebound, as we prepare for what is likely to be a close match against Loomis on Friday.