Athlete of the Week: Tennis Player Jason Halpern

A lot is expected of someone who is the captain of a sports team. It’s fair to see even more can be expected from someone who is a captain of a team for multiple years, but one of Fort Lee’s own is shining in just such a capacity.

Senior Jason Halpern is a student athlete on the Fort Lee boys tennis team and has been on the varsity squad since his freshman year. Through his journey to the final season, Halpern has risen to the level of the top singles player for Fort Lee as well as a two-time captain of the Bridgemen.

On the court, Halpern has yet to lose this season; he's a perfect 7-0 so far. Remarkably, Jason’s team also can boast the same record as the Bridgemen have not lost a team match all year.

Just this week, the Fort Lee senior handled each challenger opposing him in guiding the team to three wins in a span of five days.

“I couldn’t do much better,” said Jason after Friday’s victory. “I went undefeated so that feels good and I keep my undefeated record. The team is undefeated [too] so it can’t get much better than that.”

Halpern’s coach, Phil Zappel, looked back at how Jason performed this week and attributed it to how the senior approaches each challenger.

“[Jason] can pick his opponent apart,” the coach said. “He modifies his game to attack his opponent’s weaknesses in the best way possible.”

On Friday, the Fort Lee Bridgemen found himself down two games to none at the outset, only to win the next 11 games in a row enroute another win (6-2, 6-1).

Jason was also tested on Wednesday when he played Dwight Morrow. Instead of facing Kevin Chen as he did earlier in the year, Halpern was opposed by Colin Chiang, which set up an unusual scenario for the senior.

“I wasn’t expecting him,” Jason said of facing the new opponent. “I was just thinking to do the same thing as last time, but low and behold, it was a different person. I had to change the way I played.”

The end result was a 6-1, 6-4 win for Halpern. Add the victory on Monday (6-1, 6-2) against Westwood and it completes another week where Jason did not lose a match.

“It’s a blessing,” said coach Zappel of coaching someone like Jason. “It makes my job easy. I don’t have to worry about what is going on in first singles.”

But the week ahead holds another three matches for Fort Lee, including some of the more difficult competition that Halpern has admitted to facing in the past.  In a self-described “judgement week,” he will oppose Cliffside Park’s top singles player, against whom Jason is 1-1, on Monday and then a new team at Lakeland on Tuesday.

That all leads up to what is being classified as one of the biggest tennis matches of the year against archrival and undefeated Tenafly on Friday.

“I definitely want to win as a team,” Jason said of Friday’s upcoming contest next week. “I wish I could say I want to win, but I just want the whole team to win.”

Stay tuned to Fort Lee Patch throughout the week to see if the reigning Athlete of the Week can continue his undefeated season and keep his team on the track for a perfect season.