The Overlake Owls won their sixth straight 1A Emerald City League tennis match Wednesday afternoon with a 4-1 victory against Seattle Academy at The Overlake School.
The match began with a grueling showdown between Overlake’s No. 1 singles star Boris Rozenberg and the Cardinals’ top man Charlie Mohn, who emerged the victor, 6-4, 6-3.
“Unfortunately, Boris wasn’t feeling very well today, but that’s taking nothing away from Charlie’s game,” said Overlake head coach Bill Armstrong. “He’s a very solid player, you’ve got to come in and make shots.”
In the singles’ No. 2 match, Overlake’s Will Drake defeated Adam Epstein 6-3, 6-2 to even the score and left it up to the doubles teams to pull through with the victory.
“Will, he’s our bulldog,” Armstrong said. “He’s so tenacious.”
Led by the rocket serve and fine net play of senior Ed Samson and the consistency of sophomore Marcus Munoz, the duo beat the Cardinals’ Chris Jung and Michael Chin, 6-1, 6-3. The Overlake doubles teams went on to sweep all three matches for the 4-1 team victory.
No. 2 doubles team of Pratik Keni and Trevor Partington won 6-2, 6-2 and Nishant Velagapudi and Henk Wolda also emerged champions, 8-3.
Overlake will now face one of the best tennis programs in the state in University Prep this afternoon at 3:30, a meeting the Owls have looked forward to since they lost to the Pumas in the first match of the season.
“We’re firmly embedded in second place, which is where we should be. We haven’t dropped a match since (University Prep),” Armstrong noted. “We’re really jacked up for Friday. We want to measure ourselves against the best, and right now that’s who they are.”