Cougar Tennis Falls to Bulldogs

Jake Kozlenko and Zack Kadish won Dayton’s first doubles match of the season, and Dayton took all three singles matches to defeat the Cranford Cougars 4-1 in Cranford.

In the singles matches, Dayton swept through, with a 6-1 6-2 victory for Matt Neubauer over Alex Heucke, and a forfeit that gave Zach Corey a victory in his match against Andrew Miller, who suffered from post concussion-like symptoms. The big toughest match played on this day belonged to the bulldogs Ross Konesky and the Cougars Christian Woo.

Konesky clawed his way to a 7-5 first set victory, and battled Woo in a tiebreaker and won the match on an exciting final point. Cranford’s lone victory of the day came in the second doubles match, where Jeff Francis and A.J. Buono defeated Aaron Lapena and Devin Demest.

"With us getting moved up this season, it’s been a very difficult season for us so far,” said Cougars coach Rich Goldstein before the match. “I think yesterday was a very big success for us, we played Governor Livingston we won 3-2 and we haven’t beat Governor Livingston in about the 5-6 years that I can recall since I became coach, and probably not much before that.”

While this might not be the best season for the Cougars, they do have some bright spots going ahead in the future.

“My second and third singles, Andrew Miller on third and Christian Woo on second.” said Goldstein when asked what he has liked in terms of improvement throughout the year. “They are both juniors right now, and Andrew pretty much took on the sport as a freshman and he has really improved significantly. Christian is an extremely steady and confident player who has moved up in his skills as well as the season progressed.”

For the Bulldogs, not only was their win in the doubles match significant to the match, but to their season. Dayton doubles had no won a set all season, so their win was a major ego boost.

"It feels pretty good,” said the junior Kadish. “I’ve been feeling bad over the season because we rely on our singles guys a lot and we put a lot of pressure on them.”

Kozlenko agrees, and even looks at it beyond this day.

“I think it’s important going into the state playoffs and it’s a good momentum boost for our team going forward.”