DeMatha won first doubles behind Zach Nicholson and Eric Ward.
St. John's senior Nobu Tanaka finally got revenge over DeMatha's Zach Nicholson, who beat Tanaka for the WCAC titles the previous two years.
By Ryan Mink
rmink@digitalsports.comGonzaga junior Paul Mascola thought he had done the math with his teammates. According to their calculations, the Eagles had already sewn up the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference tennis championship before his match started.
“It turned out that we did the math wrong,” Mascola said. “My match was the deciding match. So it was a good thing I won.”
Gonzaga had a two-point lead when Mascola went into a tiebreaker with DeMatha’s Christian Keenum at the No. 4 singles spot. Mascola had already rallied from love-30 to force a tiebreaker, and he trailed 1-3 in the tiebreaker. By this point, DeMatha and Gonzaga’s entire teams and fans were crowded around the court cheering on every point.
Capped off with an unreturned serve, Mascola mounted a comeback and took the tiebreaker, 7-5, to win the match and give the Eagles the victory they needed in a 37-32 triumph over defending WCAC champion DeMatha Thursday at the Tennis Center at College Park.
“That was pretty nerve-wracking,” Mascola said. “I just tried to focus on my strings and not look around at everyone watching and think it would be over soon enough.”
Gonzaga won the conference title in 2005 and 2006 before the Stags claimed it last season. Now, thanks to Mascola and Gonzaga’s other lower-ranked singles players, the Eagles brought it back to the District.
“This means a lot,” Gonzaga senior Eric Chavous said. “[We won it] three out of my four years here. I’m loving it. I came in with the championship and I’m leaving with the championship. You can’t ask for much more than that.”
DeMatha junior John Collins beat Gonzaga’s Alex Wiese, 10-2, at No. 2 singles and Stags junior Eric Ward defeated the Eagles’ Darius Mattison, 10-3, at No. 3 singles. But Gonzaga was saved by Mascola, No. 5 singles player Malik Waleed and No. 6 singles player Ryan Jenks. Waleed beat Good Counsel’s Razvan Ciuta, 10-5, and Jenks beat Bishop Ireton’s Sebastian Spinetto, 10-5.
“Even though we’re both pretty much the same team we were last year, I think we were a little deeper,” Gonzaga Coach Ariel Laguilles said. “We knew that these bottom three -- the four, five and six spots --were going to be the ones that we really needed to edge out DeMatha.”
Gonzaga, who split the regular-season meetings with DeMatha, was aided by St. John’s senior Nobu Tanaka, who beat DeMatha senior Zach Nicholson at first singles, 10-4. Tanaka had lost to Nicholson each time they faced during their sophomore year and twice when they were juniors, including two times in the WCAC first-singles championship.
Before he went to bed Wednesday night, Tanaka talked to his personal coach, Claude Grady, who told the Longwood University-bound senior that it didn’t matter whether he won or lost just as long as he played aggressively.
Although Tanaka beat Nicholson in their one regular-season match this year, meaning Tanaka entered Thursday’s final undefeated, he still couldn’t sleep. He had a dream that he beat Nicholson, and when he woke up he was too excited to rest.
But because he wanted to win so badly, Tanaka began the match timid and fell behind 2-1 when Nicholson broke his serve and then trailed 3-1 when Nicholson held.
“When he broke me and held my mindset kind of changed,” Tanaka said. “I was like, ‘I’m not playing my game or anything.’ … I thought about [what Coach said] in the middle of my match and it really turned things around. I was like, ‘Even if I lose, I don’t want to lose like this. If I’m going to lose, the only way I’m going to accept a loss is going out with a bang.’”
Tanaka rallied to win five straight games and eight of the next nine, breaking Nicholson’s serve three times during the process.
“It’s pretty unbelievable actually,” Tanaka said. “I really wanted to win because it was my senior season and I was undefeated. I didn’t want it to be a fluke season. I wanted to go out with a bang. That and I wanted to have revenge on him from last year.”
“He just gets everything back,” Nicholson said of Tanaka. “He’s like a backboard, basically. He wanted it bad. He had more fire to win it than me today.”
Nicholson got a bit of satisfaction in his first doubles match, where he and Ward beat Gonzaga’s Weiss and Chavous, 10-8. The two pairs faced three times this season with DeMatha winning all three times by the same score.
“It was pretty hard because I really didn’t want to honestly be here after that [singles loss],” Nicholson said. “But we’re a team and for Eric we’ve got to come out here and win. So I had to do it and had to refocus.”