Boys’ Tennis Falls to Skilled Choate Squad

Boys’ tennis traveled to Choate Rosemary Hall last weekend to challenge the undefeated Wild Boars. The team lost its previous two games to Groton School and Loomis Chaffee School, respectively. Exeter lost the six out of their seven matches to Choate, falling to 0-3 this season.After winning their scrimmage matches against St. Paul’s School on Apr. 1, the boys gained confidence heading into the start of their regular season. The ladder set going to Choate ranked captain and senior Cameron Gruss as the team’s number one seed followed by senior Sergio Escobar, upper Vinayak Kurup, upper Logan Gruss, upper Pedro Sanson, prep Carsten Bressel, senior Liam Breen and senior SP Agata. So far, the team has yet to win more than two matches in a meet, and Choate held PEA to a single win from Breen.Bressel complemented Breen–who ranks sixth on PEA’s varsity ladder–for his tremendous play during his match on Saturday. “Liam Breen stepped up his game after winning the first set to win the only match for Exeter’s A team. He got into his opponent’s head to prevail,” Bressel said, adding, “Personally, I didn’t play as well as I would have liked to; however, while discounting the score, I didn’t play terribly.”Despite Breen’s match, Bressel and other players on the varsity team could not secure another victory. Despite this, Bressel felt that the players on Choate’s varsity A team played remarkably well.Agata, however, thought the team was unready to face Choate. “We all struggled against Choate. They are a good team, as usual, and we just weren’t sufficiently prepared,” he said. Agata added that the team will need to concentrate its efforts more during practices if they would like to win more matches throughout the year. “We are focusing a lot on consistency and improving the quality of our rally ball,” he said.For Bressel, the team needs to win its doubles matches to start winning games–doubles matches are a best-of-three series in which the winner takes one point before the teams move onto six singles matches. “It is crucial to win the one point for doubles because it can improve the mindset going into the singles matches, and the point can help if the match is close,” Bressel said.PEA’s varsity A team travels to Roxbury Latin School on Apr. 21 to try and secure their first regular season win. Despite its record, Agata remains optimistic for the rest of this season. “The more time we get on the courts hitting and drilling the better our results will be. I think we will do well and continue to improve throughout the season,” he added.Bressel felt similarly to Agata. “The matches against Choate certainly weren’t an exact representation of how we are as a team in regards to the scores, [and] I think that we have the potential to win a lot. We just have to practice more and get some wins under our belt,” Bressel stated.