Chaminade rules NSCHSAA boys tennis championships
Chaminade’s George Londos makes a return in a single match against Jordan Gonzales of St. Anthony’s at the CHSAA boys singles and doubles tennis tournament, on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Credit: Derrick Dingle/Derrick Dingle
If there was any question about which was the top team in this NSCHSAA boys tennis season, the answer has come in the past two days. Chaminade owned it. The whole thing, soup-to-nuts.
After the Flyers won the conference championship with a 7-0 dispatching of St. Anthony’s in Monday’s title match, they showed up at Kellenberg on Tuesday and overpowered everyone in the NSCHSAA Individual Championships. The first three rounds of the tournament have produced all-Chaminade championship matches in both singles and doubles to be played Wednesday. The doubles semifinals featured the four entries from the Flyers.
“It’s the deepest team I’ve had in 10 seasons,” Chaminade coach Dan Petruccio said. “St. Anthony’s is always competitive and the big measuring stick for us — always close matches. We beat them four times, three by 7-0 or 6-1. This team has been impressive.”
If one performance loomed as most impressive on Tuesday it was the play of the Flyers’ fourth-doubles team, senior Dante D’Alonzo and sophomore Peter Arciero. D’Alonzo’s partner from Monday’s team title match was unavailable and Arciero was summoned to step in. The duo had never played together but rolled into the championship match with an 8-0 quarterfinal win over St. Anthony No. 1 squad of Sahil Patel and Nick Maurio and an 8-5 semifinal triumph over teammates Dylan Rhodes and Trevor Sagliocca.
“This was the last tennis event of the season so I was ‘all-in,’” Arciero said. “I got lucky. Dante just gets to everything.”
“[Arciero] is a really consistent partner and he makes great passing shots,” D’Alonzo said.
They will meet Chaminade’s top doubles team of Will Souther and Kevin Hyland in Wednesday’s final. Souther and Hyland won a semifinal against teammates Theodore Bliagos and Max Matuszewski, 8-3.
“We shuffled most of our doubles pairings in the middle of the season looking for the right temperament because doubles is an intellectual game, more chess than a test of strength,” Petruccio said. “If the temperaments of the players are in conflict or too similar, it doesn’t work. We found the right combinations.”
The singles final pits the Flyers’ top two singles players, No. 1 George Londos and No. 2 Luke Hynes.
Londos rolled into the final with an 8-1 semifinal win over St. Anthony’s surprising Jordan Gonzales, who was the Friars’ No. 3 singles player this season.
“I watched his [quarterfinal] and saw he is best when he gets the same shots over and over so I never let him know what was coming,” Londos said. “Sometimes it was a slice and sometimes topspin. I tried to stay unpredictable.”
Hynes won a semifinal against Kellenberg’s Zachary Oliveira, 8-5. He seized the match when he broke serve in the fourth game and held it in the fifth for a 4-1 lead. He didn’t break serve again, but also didn’t have his broken.
“Our coach really put together a great team this season,” Hynes said. “What we did is a great accomplishment for our seniors.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
