Unbeaten Mid-Penn Colonial champion Camp Hill and Lancaster-Lebanon champ Elco both won Friday in the first round of District 3-AA team tennis at Hershey Racquet Club to advance to Tuesday’s semifinals.
The No. 3 Lions shut out Berks entrant Fleetwood 3-0, while No. 4 Elco did the same to L-L brethren Donegal.
James Buchanan drew the AA bracket’s short straw and wasn’t as fortunate, dropping a 3-0 decision to bracket top-seed Lancaster Country Day in an expedient 28 minutes.
Camp Hill (13-0) got a monster comeback at first doubles from the duo of Matt Leach and Adam Malarich, a clinic from Patrick Yang at No. 2 singles and a closing effort at second doubles from Brett Behney and Jordan Nolte to shut out Fleetwood.
Leach and Malarich dropped the first five games of their match against Fleetwood’s Eric Wily and Josh Earnerst.
From that huge hole – and instead of packing it in to conserve energy for the second set and possibly beyond – Leach and Malarich ripped off the next 11 games en route to a 7-5, 6-2 victory.
“We were just missing easy shots,” Leach said in explaining away the 0-5 start. “I don’t know that we tight. A lot of unforced errors – deep, wide. We netted so many volleys.”
Malarich concurred. “We just needed to step it up,” he said. “I didn’t expect that either [11 straight games], but we started playing well.”
Yang dispatched Fleetwood No. 2 Cristian Melendez 6-1, 6-2. Behney and Nolte clinched the match with a 6-1, 7-5 win over Bill Havrilchak and Patrick Tobias.
“One doubles is one of our strengths,” Camp Hill coach Greg Herb said, with some measure of relief. “When I look at the matchups, that’s one I pick for sure. We had to pick off two other courts.
“I haven’t seen that [comeback] happen here, in high school tennis, before.”
Two-time Mid-Penn AA singles champ Paxton Fitzpatrick was locked in a tussle with Tigers’ No. 1 Christian Boyer when that court was retired as a push, at one set apiece.
L-L champ Elco swept past Donegal, with Josh Pfautz and Austen Davis bringing home the clincher at No. 2 doubles with a 6-3, 7-6(5) victory over Noah Zern and David King.
Other courts won by the Raiders (13-2) included Galen McNaughton at No. 2 singles 6-3, 6-2 over Andrew Hollinger and first doubles, where Noah Ginder and Kurtis Brown took out Donegal’s Colby Hoover and Matt Crager 6-3, 6-3.
It was Elco’s first team tennis win at districts in a decade.
“After the first set, everything tightened up,” Elco coach Zach Cook said, “but they came through.
“We’ve been here before, but haven’t finished. So this is big for us.”
James Buchanan capped its most successful team season in ages (15-3) with an appearance as the 8-seed, but it was an all-too-brief one. The Rockets were served up to AA powerhouse and top-seed LCD in a 3-0 loss that took 28 minutes to complete.
LCD’s Blaise Casselbury took No. 1 singles from Grant Strawoet 6-1, 6-0 while Wesley Davis was beating Buchanan’s Andrew Rupert 6-0, 6-1 in the deciding match. Sebastian Pena and Peter McKernan completed the sweep by topping the Rockets’ Aubrey Brown and Chance Wishard 6-1, 6-0 at first doubles.
“Our guys knew coming in that we had a ‘snowball’s chance’,” Rockets coach Terri Beegle said. “They put up a good fight and put up some good rallies. I’m very proud of these guys.”
District 3 singles play starts Saturday at 1 at Hershey Racquet Club in both classifications.
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