Martlets Defeat Salisbury

It was a great day for tennis, with perfect weather for the winding roads to Salisbury.  The Martlets were a bit slow out of the gate, dropping the first few games in all the doubles matches.  However, they soon settled into more of a rhythm and began to figure out their opponents’ weaknesses.  The #1 team of Calvin Bixby ‘28 & Will Jones ‘28 clinched an 8-5 win with some excellent communication and teamwork, and the #2 team of Sonny Darnowski ‘28 & Rohan Satpathy ‘27 bounced back to also win 8-5, with some excellent net play.  Although we fell at he #3 spot, those two wins allowed us to grab the doubles point.  (Kudos also to the freshman duo of Charlie Zhang ‘29 and Ryden Maeda ‘29, who won their exhibition match, while another exhibition team of Luke Champoux ‘28 and Alessio Suarez ‘28 lost in a tiebreaker.)  In singles play, Will Jones ‘28 and Sonny Darnowski ‘28 faced two talented opponents at the #1 and #2 spots.  Both were able to come away with 8-6 wins after hard-fought matches — Will mastered his consistency and placement to take control of a lot of points, and Sonny did a fantastic job returning his opponent’s very difficult serve, and then getting to the net to take advantage of his net game.  Sam Herdeg ‘27 and Issac Kwon ‘28 dominated their opponents at #4 and #5, both winning 8-1, while Tyson Mertz ‘27 had a great showing on the singles ladder, fighting some very close games to win 8-5 at #6.  The Martlets have one more game on the road against Taft, before a welcome string of home matches.

The Grit & Grace award goes to Sonny Darnowski.  After coming from behind for a doubles win, Sonny faced off against a talented singles opponent with a fantastic serve.  Despite being on the receiving end of several aces, Sonny put into play what we had practiced this week, taking shorter swings on his returns to put himself in a strong position to turn the point in his favor.  He never let himself get frustrated, taking every point as it came and staying focused on taking advantage of any missteps his opponent made.