Title comes down to Raider first singles DiCicco in tie-breaker
OCEAN CITY – When the Ocean City High School boys tennis team won the 2024 South Jersey Group III sectional title Tuesday afternoon, it was an actual dream come true.
Second singles Tracy Steingard said he envisioned the match against No. 4 seed Shawnee High School coming down to 2-2 with first singles Charles DiCicco deciding the match in a third-set tiebreaker.
“Believe it or not I actually had a dream that’s how this would end,” Steingard said. “I’m so happy for Charles and this team. It couldn’t be better.”
This match was a nail-biter for the spectators and teammates who crowded around the fence at the Raiders’ home court across Atlantic Avenue from their high school.
In short order, the first doubles duo of brothers Colin and Chase Bowman, a senior and sophomore, respectively, finished their match, winning 6-4, 6-4 over Shawnee’s Matt Pierson and Clark Mangan.
Things were far from settled. Shawnee was leading 2-1 after its second and third singles, Alex Michaluk and Gavin Prom, finished shortly thereafter, topping Raider counterparts Steingard and Jackson Barnes.
But the momentum had shifted.
Second doubles Luke Wagner and Joey Goodman had lost their first set to Shawnee’s Ryan Senft and Kevin Baumann, 4-6, but they controlled the second set 6-2, forcing their match into a 10-point tiebreaker. As that was happening, DiCicco had also rebounded from a close first set loss, 6-7 (4-7) and won his second set 6-2 as well.
The doubles team went into the tiebreaker first, quickly jumped out to a big lead and won 10-5 to tie the match 2-2.
As soon as that finished, spectators rushed to the other end of the courts where DiCicco was starting to wind up his match against Shawnee’s Sean Sipera. With every point in the tie-breaker, teammates alternately cheered for their first singles players.
DiCicco went up 3-0, but Sipera came back and they traded points, with the Raider starting to inch away. When Sipera hit a return long, the steady and steadfast “Chooch” showed a brief burst of some emotion as he won his tie-breaker, the match and the South Jersey title for his teammates 10-5.
“If we could put it all on and it comes down to one person, that’s who we want it to come down to,” Ocean City head coach Tim Kelley said. “We call him ‘the robot.’ He’s never too high, he’s never too low. He’s always himself. He trusts himself. He trusts his coaches. He trusts his teammates. Everyone believes in him. He’s been a captain for three years. It’s just amazing that it comes down to that.”
“It’s got to be one of the top feelings in my life, to be honest,” DiCicco said about being the player who decided the championship for his team. “Everyone was here from all the years. The people who played when I was a junior, sophomore, freshman, they all came.
“I knew that it was 2-2 and that every point counted and just to hear everyone and see how happy everyone was, was a great moment,” he said.
“It was always the goal from freshman year to be a South Jersey champion and to do it senior year, to be the clinching match, it’s a little bit like a fairy tale,” DiCicco said. “It definitely feels amazing.”
The senior said the match was competitive from the start.
“In the first set we were exchanging games and he won in a tie-breaker. It felt like it could have gone to either player,” DiCicco said. “In the second set I regrouped and made some adjustments. In the tie-breaker things worked my way. I played my heart out on every point.”
“It was a very tough match. They were great competition, probably the best we played all year,” Colin Bowman said about Shawnee’s first doubles. “Chase and I played fantastic though. We were very consistent and felt great about it.”
He added it is “great” playing with Chase. “We’re brothers so we have the luxury of talking at home too. That’s the big thing. It’s not all at practice for us.”
Asked how it feels to be going out as a senior with a South Jersey title, he added, “Dude, I love that. There’s nothing better than that.”
“It couldn’t feel any better,” Chase said about winning the title with his older brother. “I knew it from the start that we were going to play well together.” Waiting to see which team would win with everything tied 2-2, he said, “I couldn’t have been more scared.” When DiCicco won the final point, Chase added, “I couldn’t believe it. I just sprinted out (onto the court) with the team. I threw my water bottle and ran.”
“It’s electric,” Wagner said of the Raiders winning, then he smiled and looked over to a teammate. “That’s a good word, right?”
He and Goodman – “the best partner I could have asked for” – got some “forward momentum” after losing the first set. “This was the goal. I’m very happy we succeeded and on to states.”
Goodman said his partner “is a great captain. He teaches me a lot. And he let me use his racket when both of my rackets’ strings broke. I think I played pretty good with it and he played awesome. I’m just super happy we won.”
He was feeling good about things by the time they got to the tie-breaker in their second doubles match. Goodman and Wagner were down 0-4 in the first set but battled back before losing it 4-6. “We steamrolled the second set and then in the tie-breaker I knew we had it,” Goodman said.
“Over the past four years, when I entered as a freshman, tennis was such an individual thing, and I think this moment shows how much of a team sport it can become when you have such great people you are surrounded by,” Barnes said. “For me, personally, today wasn’t exactly the result I wanted, but that doesn’t matter any more. It’s important to celebrate your peers and your teammates when they win and that means more to me.
“It was nerve-racking,” Barnes said about watching DiCicco in that final point, “but when he got it it was just incredible.”
“It feels unbelievable,” Steingard said of being a South Jersey champion. “These four years have just been a grind. It feels amazing just to get that win and I couldn’t do it without my team.”
Given the way the championship unfolded, Kelley said he still isn’t sure how he feels about individual matches being decided by third-set tie-breakers in which players win by being the first to 10 points rather than full third sets. “It is definitely interesting. A lot of people around the state seem to be against it, maybe want to keep it as a regular season thing. It hurt us once at the beginning of the year but today it worked for us so I don’t know what to think.”
The Raiders, 16-3 so far as they move on to the state tournament, had an outstanding season last year, finishing with an 18-3 record and falling to eventual champion Moorestown in the sectional semifinals. This year, Ocean City beat No. 3 seed Moorestown in the semifinals 4-1 before facing Shawnee in the finals.
“Since this class’s freshman year, I told them this is the class,” Kelley said. “Last year we thought we had a really good chance. Things didn’t go our way versus Moorestown. We didn’t play our best tennis that day and they were the better team and handled things in the final. We thought if we could have gotten past them we could have done something similar. That’s not how it worked out.
“These guys put all the hard work in in the offseason. They’ve been tennis players, not just athletes playing tennis for the most part. It’s a really big difference,” Kelley said. “I love these guys. They’re awesome.”
Ocean City will travel to North Jersey (Section 2) Millburn (21-3) for the state semifinal. On the other side of the bracket, North Jersey (Section 1) Tenafly (19-2) faces Central Jersey’s West Windsor-Plainsboro South (26-1). The winners will play for the Group III state title.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
