Eduardo Menezes, a Ross School senior from Brazil, was the odds-on favorite to win the Suffolk County boys tennis singles championship Monday in a match with second-seeded Bryan Volk of Half Hollow Hills West.
Going into that final, at Smithtown East High School, the Division IV champion, who sat out the requisite year after Ross discontinued its tennis academy, had not lost a set in the 19 matches he’d played this season, and had lost just 14 games. Win or lose, Menezes, who’s to play tennis at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in the fall, will advance to the state tournament that’s to begin at the United States Tennis Association’s National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens, where the U.S. Open is played, on May 31.
Menezes’s teammates Henry Tietz, a senior, and Leonardo Carmo, an eighth grader, were as of Monday hoping to make the state tournament as well as the county doubles tournament’s third-place team. Tietz and Carmo’s opponents that day were to be Westhampton Beach’s Giancarlo Volpe and Robert Stabile, the second seeds, who had defeated Tietz and Carmo in the recent Division IV tournament.
In other county matches, East Hampton High’s Henry Cooper lost a three-setter in the first round to Ward Melville’s Aidan Thomas; Nick Cooper, Henry’s older brother, also lost in the first round; Ross’s Jagger Cohen, after defeating John Glenn’s Enzo Kazandjian 7-5, 6-2, lost to Mount Sinai’s Juan Perez 6-0, 6-2 in the second round; East Hampton’s Cameron and Kiefer Mitchell, its top doubles team, after winning a three-setter in the first round, lost 6-4,7-6 to a Hills East team that Tietz and Carmo defeated in the quarterfinal round, and Ross’s Simon Aser and Nicolas Sanchez, after winning a first-round match, lost 6-4, 6-2 to Stabile and Volpe.
In team tournament play, East Hampton, the 14th seed among the large schools, was to have played host Tuesday to 19th-seeded Huntington, and 13-0 Ross, the small school tourney’s top seed — and defending champion — was to have had a home match with the Port Jefferson-John Glenn winner yesterday. The final is to be played tomorrow at Smithtown East.
Menezes, who is from Florianopolis, a small city in southern Brazil, said in a statement that Marcelo Reda, Ross’s athletic director and varsity tennis coach, provided: “The core values of cooperation and integrity instilled at Ross have enhanced my performance on the court and have helped me form friendships outside of it. . . . The school’s coaching staff, particularly Marcelo Reda and Vinicius Carmo, have done an excellent job in managing the team and in fostering our growth.”
“Leaving Ross will be challenging because I will miss the supportive and encouraging community here where cooperation and integrity are at the forefront, helping everyone strive for and achieve greater things.”
