Doubles carry Glenbard East to win over Montini

With two new coaches a couple things have changed for both the Glenbard East and Montini boys tennis teams.

But one thing stayed the same from last season, a Glenbard East victory.

Glenbard East edged out a 3-2 victory with the help of their slightly more experienced doubles teams, winning No. 1 through No. 3 doubles, while the Broncos played to their advantages, winning the only two singles matches.

"I think definitely our players were fortunately more mature, been around tennis a little bit longer through the doubles," said Rams coach Steve Hoogerheide. "But they have a couple great singles players… . Just fortunately we played three doubles and two singles and that went to our advantage."

The lower part of the lineup quickly got to work for Glenbard East as the No. 2 doubles paring of Sam Fragoso and Eno Dhamo and the No. 3 pairing of Joe Janouch and Zain Janeeluddin both took their matches 6-0, 6-0.

Not to be outdone, Montini senior Kristian Krcek used some great serves to help set up easy points in the No. 1 singles slot, defeating Andrew Roth 6-0, 6-0.

"He's a very, very strong player," said Montini coach Tiffany Scott. "He's actually our captain too. He's really setting the pace for the team, and they all see him play and it pushes them to do that much better."

The No. 1 doubles match between Glenbard East's Jack Difino and Emran Aldaas and Montini's David Harte and Nino Carollo turned out to be the match clincher for Glenbard East and one of the closer matches of the day.

"We're both pretty tennis inexperienced, actually," Difino said. "We're both involved in a lot of other sports. We don't play much in the off-season, so really we've just been grinding it out together, getting to know each other. We've improved a lot since Day One of the season."

Difino and Aldaas took a 6-1, 6-3 win despite not having played much tennis together.

"We played better," Aldaas said of the match. "We improved. I see that in my partner and I. We're doing great."

To round out the day, freshman Thomas Batka put on a good performance over Glenbard East's Mark Elliott, who was undefeated until Batka's 6-3, 6-2 victory.