Scarsdale Summer Youth Tennis Season Concludes

With the rain holding off but darkness coming quickly, a year of great tennis for many Scarsdale youth tennis players came down to one point.

On the final night of the 26th Annual Scarsdale Summer Youth Tennis League, a final tennis tournament was held in celebration of their year. The championship round was between 11-year-old Daniel Beitler and 14-year-old old Humza Mian in a first to 15-point match.

Bettler ended up taking the championship with a 15-14 win.

The tournament was played on the tennis courts at the Scarsdale Middle School and all the participants in the program showed up to eat pizza and ice cream and play one more round of tennis.

Bob Harrison, the head of the program, helped to give out the trophies and was proud to see the program to continue to keep going strong after a quarter century.

"I have been involved in this program for 26 years and we have actually had 18,000 Scarsdale youths participate over our 26 years. We have a terrific tennis program here in Scarsdale," he said. 

The championship round was played under "ping-pong rules," meaning there were no sets and the winner would be the player who reached 15 points first.

With the match at 14-12 in favor of Beitler, Mian, who had been undefeated in 20 matches coming in, was able to get it back to a tie and Beitler showed frustration in allowing the game to get back to even. 

The match was tied at 14-14 setting the stage for one ultimate point.

With the court starting to get dark, both players played mostly easy lobs to one another, trying to avoid a fatal mistake that could cost them the championship.

The match came to an end and so did Mian's undefeated streak when he committed an unforced error and Beitler was the champion.

For Beitler, the win came as a surprise over an opponent who had not lost all season long. He felt that the dusk didn't really matter to him when it came to the outcome of the match.

"It feels great to win, to be honest I wasn't expecting it," he said. "By the end, it didn't really matter that it was dark or not. I was really tired and focused on the ball, that I barely even noticed it."