Northern Highlands downs Wayne Hills, wins North 1, Group 3 title by Bob Schwalb special to The Record

FRANKLIN LAKES – Brendan Holleran was extremely nervous as he watched his Northern Highlands tennis team’s state sectional final against Wayne Hills come down to the wire.

The Highlander senior wasn’t fretting about the match but about the Middle Eastern History and statistics tests he’d have to take today if his team lost.

“I knew I’d get to miss school if we won,” Holleran said. “I really didn’t want to study.”

In the end, Holleran didn’t have to as his teammates Rohit Ravi and Aaron Shepp broke a 2-2 deadlock with their second-doubles win. The duo came back to beat Wayne Hills’ Jason Reiser and Sam Reyzelman, 3-6, 6-3 and 6-2, giving their team the NJSIAA North 1, Group 3 crown with a 3-2 win Tuesday and a trip to today’s Group 3 Tournament at Mercer County Park in West Windsor.

Before Ravi and Shepp provided their heroics, Northern Highlands got a first-singles win from sophomore Alex Shen and a first-doubles win from the senior duo of Zach Levin and Holleran.

Shen topped Passaic County Tournament singles champion Jake Goldberg, 6-2, 6-1, while Levin and Holleran dusted Passaic doubles champs Ethan Gershgorin and Arjun Gurumurugan by the same scores.

Despite Northern Highlands’ lack of a star player this season, Shen said he knew his team could win a state title from Day One.

“All of our players are very skilled … even more than last year,” Shen said. “The drop-off in talent from the top of our lineup to the bottom is very small.

“Even if our singles guys couldn’t pull out as many wins, I knew our doubles teams were spectacular. I knew they could do it for us.”

On Tuesday, Shen was spectacular himself as he frustrated Passaic County’s best player in Goldberg. The Highlander ace has played many of Bergen County’s top guns this spring and said he’s never fazed by the competition.

“Sometimes I’ll be the aggressor … it depends on who I’m playing,” Shen said. “I saw that [Goldberg] got frustrated easily and wasn’t very good at attacking. I just tried to keep getting the ball back and that worked for me.”

On the first-doubles court, Levin and Holleran breezed through their match, showing off the teamwork that earned them this year’s Bergen County Tournament large-schools first-singles title.

“We put our foot on the gas and never let up,” Levin said. “We kept the pressure on them and tried to finish the match as quickly as possible.”

After the first four matches were decided in two sets, Shepp and Ravi were starting their third set against Reyzelman and Reiser.

With everyone else watching, the duos traded service breaks over the first four games to bring the score to 2-2. Reiser was serving in the fifth game and got to 40-15 but Shepp and Ravi stormed back to break serve again and won three straight games after that to finish the match.

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“We were pretty tight in the first set … not hitting as hard as we should have,” Ravi said. “After that set, our coaches came up to us and said, ‘Just go down swinging.’ We really started smacking the ball after that.”

“We’ve had a lot of close matches this year so we were used to the pressure,” added Shepp. “We just played like we didn’t want to lose and came out on top.”

North 2, Group 2

Thirty-two years after winning its first state championship, the Fort Lee boys tennis team made it a pair. On Tuesday, the Bridgemen defeated Governor Livingston, 3-2, to win the North 2, Group 2 crown and earn a ticket to today’s Group 2 Tournament at Mercer County Park in West Windsor.

“The longer you coach, the more you get used to agony of defeat,” Fort Lee coach Phil Zappel said. “Right now I’m in shock.”

In winning the crown, the Bridgemen got singles victories from junior Thomas Yu, senior David Grant and sophomore Ivan Repin, who rebounded from a first-set loss to defeat rival Alec Palumbo 1-6, 6-1 and 6-3.

North 1, Group 1

Glen Rock lost a 5-0 decision to top-seeded Mountain Lakes in the finals. The second-doubles pair of Hiroki Doyle and Erik Vreedenburgh put up the best fight, losing to Lakers Stefan Prvulovic and Brent Schiller 6-1, 5-7 and 7-6(10-8).

North 1, Group 2

Demarest avenged a pair of 3-2 regular-season losses to Tenafly with a 3-2 win in the finals. Carlos Vasquez and Justin Kim won two-set decisions at first and second singles while third-singles player Robert Sorkin provided a championship-winning, three-set victory. After losing to the Tigers’ Marc Balderacchi two times earlier in the season, Sorkin beat his rival 1-6, 6-4 and 6-3.

Non-Public, North A

Delbarton beat  Don Bosco, 4-1, in the finals for the fourth straight year. Russel Hernandez provided Don Bosco’s only point with a second-singles win.

Non-Public, North B

Dwight-Englewood lost an excruciating 3-2 decision to state superpower Newark Academy in the finals. The Bulldogs got a straight-sets win from first-singles player Daniel Nuzhny and a three-set win from the first-doubles pair of Shanay Amin and Brandon Grill. The locals almost earned a decisive point as second-singles player Rick Sivarak and the second-doubles pair of Tejas Akula and Cameron Janssens both lost in three sets.