From barely getting in to knocking off the No. 1 seed in the first round. That's Hershey's week on the courts for you.
With a week to go, the Trojans sat ninth in an eight-team field vying for a District 3-AAA team tennis berth. It is the first boys' season for power rankings to determine the eight district slots.
Hershey nearly didn't get in. But when the final rankings were released, the Trojans did sneak in, at No. 8 -- just ahead of another deserving AAA club in Red Land.
Once there, the Trojans proved Thursday that they did, indeed and obviously, belong.
Hershey (14-2) avenged a regular season loss to Mid-Penn Commonwealth champion Cumberland Valley with a 3-0 win Thursday at Hershey Racquet Club.
The loss was CV's first after 15 wins and ended the Eagles' team season.
Ben Gette's win at third singles over CV's Luke Clahane 6-2, 7-5 sealed the deal.
Earlier victories by Hershey on both doubles courts greased the skids. Gette brought it home.
"We played exceptionally well," Hershey coach Mic Wallace said, "and we're deep. We spend a lot of time working with our doubles teams. It shows how important doubles are and how we don't want to put all the pressure on our singles players."
Matches at first and second singles were then retired. CV had the edge on both courts, with Ethan Lynn leading Elbert Mets on court 1 and Milo Nagle doing the same at No. 2 against Ben Wagner.
Hershey draws Hempfield, 3-1 winners over Exeter Thursday, in the semifinals Tuesday at noon. All District 3 tennis action will take place at Hershey Racquet Club.
CV has had to do without the services of its No. 2, John Gispach, since the Red Land match. Gispach tried to play through elbow pain until he no longer could. A recent MRI on his elbow revealed a ligament tear. He's out for the year and the estimated recovery time according to Eagles coach Nick Mallos is 8-12 weeks.
Necessarily, this required a shuffling of CV's lineup Thursday. Nagle would have drawn Gette at No. 3 if Gispach was in the lineup, but instead was pushed up to No. 2 against Wagner. Clahane took Nagle's spot at third singles. A second option available for CV would have been to forfeit court 2 and keep Nagle in against Gette, rolling the dice on a 3-for-4 outcome.
Aaron Ellenberger and Jacob Jastrzebski grabbed the first court of the match with a 6-2, 6-0 win over CV's Greg Ballew and Arselan Kahn.
Trojans David Muscalus and Kabir Singh followed with a 6-3, 6-3 conquest of Anant Gupta and Sonjay Sood, setting up Gette to close it out.
"I did not know whether our doubles teams had won or not," Gette said. "I just tried to keep my head in the game.
"I had played Milo the day before at Mid-Penns [a loss in the No. 3 singles title match]. Once they moved him up to No. 2 here, my plan was just to get the ball back and play."
It would have been interesting to see the Eagles at full strength Thursday against Trojans, and whether the result would have turned out differently. We'll never know.
But we know this: The bigger travesty would have been if Hershey had never gotten the chance.
TWITTER: @Jeff_Dewees