Tarrytown Men's Tennis Team Captures Championship

When Scott Kaplan recruited and assembled the 2011 Tarrytown Men’s Tennis Team, he noticed there was a dearth of quality courts remaining in the village.

Not to worry. Kaplan, who played tennis at Division-III Washington University in St. Louis, orchestrated practices at Veteran’s Park in Greenburgh after scouring the local landscape. He eventually molded a boat-load of talent into an oceanic-deep team.

This immense depth, coupled with Tarrytown’s level of poise under pressure, helped Tarrytown cop a 2011 Westchester County League A Championship this weekend. Tarrytown earned the championship with a 4-1 win over Cortlandt Manor, one of the toughest teams in the six-team league. The league originally included eight teams in the A Division, as well as an additional C league. With less competition from neighboring teams (Briarcliff did not field a team this season), Tarrytown was able to stack their team with high-quality players.

“There are guys on our bench who would probably be stars on other teams in the league,” said the 41-year-old Kaplan, without a tinge of brash post-victory bravado.

“We did have a lot of overall depth on the team. There are guys on my third doubles team who are probably just as good as my first doubles team. I had to recruit some players this year. All of us live in Tarrytown, Greenburgh, or outside the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow area.”

The first doubles team of Hal Lee and Dexter DeSouza, like they had done so many times this season, gutted out a down-to-the-wire dogfight. The tandem has been noted for their awareness at net and ability to close out tight matches. Simply put, the team of Lee-DeSouza doesn’t get fazed.

Their clutch win antics en route to the win would signify this. Both players pulled off several acrobatic moves while steering the singing pressure cooker at Cortlandt Manor.

“The clinching victory was Hal Lee and Dexter DeSouza,” said Kaplan, whose team won the “A” final for the first time since 2008. “That was really the game-deciding win right there. We swept the doubles, when they (Lee and DeSouza) won it was over. It was a very tight match. I’m not certain, but I believe it was a 10-point tiebreaker. They’re just really consistent. Under pressure, in tiebreaker situations, they always come through. They’re both really good at net, really consistent, and they don't choke under pressure. Every one of their matches has been tight. We’ve played 10 matches, they’ve probably won four on tiebreakers.”

Outside of proving to opponents that pressure busts pipes, Tarrytown has proved that tennis is a team sport that requires camaraderie, unity, and an ability to mesh on and off the court. They sacrificed a lot of time out of their summer schedules with team practices and matches. Hoisting the team trophy, peppered with medals, and handing championship t-shirts to each other, they were reaping the rewards of the collective group effort.

While Kaplan would like to see former teams resurrected and for the league to expand to what it once was, he is pleased with the competition level. While most players are above the age of 30, a significant chunk of the players have a tennis background and competed at a considerable level.

“The quality of tennis is pretty high, it’s mostly a 4.0 tennis level, which is pretty is pretty solid,” Kaplan explained.

A lot of these players have been cut from similar teaching professional cloths, though some are in the 50-60 age range and proving they “still got it.”

And while he’s hoping the Tarrytown team can add on to their legacy, Kaplan would like to see the Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown area refurbish and revamp some of the creaky tennis courts.

“It’s too bad that we don’t have courts,” Kaplan said. “I still want to get courts that we can practice and play on. Those courts down by the river need to be fixed, so one day we could have a court. The best place to play is by the river.”

The winning members of the 2011 Tarrytown men’s tennis team (in addition to the aforementioned Kaplan, Lee and DeSouza), include Andre Neimeier, Peter Roif, Nadir Lahmeur, Cesar Gonzalez, Yoshi Togo, Sudesh Kalyanswamy, Hao Li, Paul Clarke, Richard Getler, Alexander Roberts, Craig Laub, Vic Caracappa, Sandre Ore, Thomas Chang, Peter Bartolacci, and Peter Snell.