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UNIVERSITY PARK -- The Hollidaysburg boys tennis team dropped a 3-0 decision to State College on Friday in the District 6 Class 3A championships held at the Penn State Tennis Center in high school play.
"I am really proud of my guys," said Hollidaysburg coach Brian Denis, whose club fell to 18-1. "We knew we had to play almost perfect tennis to have a shot, and for the first half of the match, we were playing lights out, looking good in three of the four matches that were being played. Credit to State College for turning those matches around."
In singles play, Hollidaysburg's Ben Johnson lost 7-6, 6-2 to Mark Sandow, while at No. 2, Garrett Bouchard fell to William Liu 6-0, 6-0. Michael Waibel's match at No. 3 to Ishan Sharma was suspended with Waible down, 7-5, 4-3.
"(State College) is an outstanding team with some great players who focus on just tennis year-round," Denis said. "When faced with some adversity, they did what great teams do."
In doubles play, the Tigers' Felix Xu and Yvan Chen lost 0-6, 6-3, 6-0 to Peter Novikov and Evan Zhang. Hollidaysburg's Alex Arbogast and Jacob Sidney were up 2-1 on Jerry Zhang and Dash Nealon when play was suspended.
"After losing four of our five players from last year's district team champion squad, I was thrilled with the season we had," Denis said. "Not many people expected us to go undefeated this year, and make it to the championship match again, giving State College all they could handle."
The Tigers will play Bedford on Monday for the Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference championship at Hollidaysburg at 4 p.m.
"We would love to cap off an outstanding season with a championship," Denis added.