LINWOOD – The Group III South Jersey tennis championship came down to the closest of finishes. Individual matches were tied 2-2 and the tie-breaker in the final match between the Mainland Regional and Shawnee High School second doubles teams was even up at 7-7 in the hunt for 10 points.
Mustangs Chad Ross and Clark Vaccaro won the first set 6-3 when all of their teammates were on the court. Shawnee’s Kevin Baumann and Frank Bonfrisco stormed back to win the second set 6-1. By then the only other players still in action were Mainland first singles Saketh Agava and Shawnee counterpart Sean Sipera, who had likewise split their first sets.
Agava quickly dispatched Sipera in the tie-breaker 10-1, evening the overall score of the match to 2-2, and the part of the crowd that was watching the first singles match quickly hustled over to see the second doubles teams decide the fate of the sectional title.
Ross and Vaccaro were able to get ahead 9-7. On a high Shawnee return from the baseline, Vaccaro leapt into the air and smashed home an overhead winner to settle the tie-breaker and the South Jersey title.
The Mustangs were again South Jersey champions, the first time since the 2022 season when Mainland went 21-1 and even the seniors on this year’s teams weren’t in the starting lineup.
Agava said in spite of losing the first set in his match, he knew he had it in him to win the next set and tie-breaker.
“I just completely erased that from my mind and just kept going,” he said. “I just used my consistency, hitting it deep and selecting when to hit my winners properly. Agava said he also was confident in the second doubles duo.
“I prayed for them to win, and I knew they had it,” he said.
Winning the South Jersey title he said is “just amazing. It’s what I’ve been dreaming of the whole time I’ve been here in Mainland.”
“We really had to slow it down because in the first set they were speeding us up and we just had to take it slow and be patient and let them make the mistakes,” Vaccaro said.
The pressure, he said, “didn’t affect me.” Winning, however, “felt awesome. It’s a little bit surreal. I didn’t expect to win like this. It’s been a lot of fun.”
His doubles partner, Ross, was affected as the pressure mounted.
“I’m very relieved, if anything. You know, the nerves were definitely there, especially for the tiebreaker,” he said.
“It was super hard to get it out of my mind, but it’s really only because of my partner that I did, because he kept bringing me up, and I knew he was in the right space, so it’s thanks to him, really,” Ross said.
After he posed for multiple photos with the trophy, that tension was gone.
“It feels good,” he said. “I’m just relieved we got there.”
Mustang third singles Owen Medland was first off the courts, dispatching Nolan Prom 6-0, 6-1. Medland, a junior, said it was stressful watching his teammates with the match so close, but for himself, he just warmed up as usual and went out there. He added winning the championship was “pretty special.”
Senior Liam Angelo and sophomore Laksh Patel lost their first singles match 6-2, 6-1 to Shawnee’s Matt Pierson and Clark Mangan, but like Mustang second singles Luigi Batioja, a sophomore who lost his match 6-2, 6-0 to Ethan Berlehner, the Mustangs would’t have made the South Jersey final with their 18-2 record without their outstanding play along the way.
“It’s a great feeling,” Angelo said of the championship. “I thought we were going to lose .. but we are able to bring it back. I’m so glad we brought it back.”
“It was a hard season but we came through,” Patel said. Winning the title “meant the whole word. All the hard work we put in, it’s good to see it finally pay off as a team. I’m proud of our team.”
“It’s really special for us,” Batioja said. “It means a lot to the team getting it for the seniors. They’ve been fighting for it all this time and it’s good for us.
“We know what we can do when we put our minds to it,” he added.
Batioja was clearly distressed after he lost his match and when he settled in to watch his second doubles teammates, “It was a lot of pressure. I was trying not to scream at them sometimes, but hey, they pulled it through. We know that they’re really good and they know what had to be done to win this title.”
One person who wasn’t feeling the pressure Monday afternoon was Mainland head coach Eileen Fortiss, who took over this season for longtime coach Chris Connolly, whose wife succumbed to a years-long battle with cancer this spring. Connolly was still helping coach along with assistant Chris Meade. All three were there for the final.
“The weirdest thing for me is that all day I wasn’t nervous, which is very strange. I don’t know if it was just mind over matter, but even standing there, it was just points, points, points,” she said.
“I was trying to keep them calm,” Fortiss said of her players.
She also foresaw the match progressing the way it did.
She said she, Connolly and Meade gamed things out and looked at the matchups with Shawnee.
“We were looking at the matchups and things like that. And we actually said we need first, we need third, and we need second doubles. We thought that those were the matches that we could win. And that’s exactly what played out,” Fortiss said.
She may not have been nervous, but she was nearlyl speechless when the team won.
“I can’t even believe we came back from what we came back from. And it’s amazing. I’m so happy for them because they wanted this, obviously, for the team, but they wanted it for (coach Connolly),” Fortiss said.
A South Jersey title was the goal the coaches set at the beginning of the season. “We really believed that they were going to be able to get here. And to pull this off and to have it happen is just, I don’t even have the words. I’m so proud of them.”
The Mainland boys are now in the state group tournament.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
