67.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Long Beach tandem thrives
Barry-Bogard win county doubles title
For the second time in three seasons, the Nassau County boys’ tennis doubles champions reside in Long Beach.
After enjoying perfect regular seasons as the Marines’ No. 2 and 3 singles players, senior Matt Barry and junior Ethan Bogard teamed up to capture the county title in doubles, going 5-0 in the tournament at Oceanside High School last month.
“They have such an understanding of the game and cover the court so well,” Long Beach coach Sue Hirschbein-Bodnar said. “They both have experience at doubles, just not together. They know how to play the angles and how to communicate, so I’m not surprised they won it.”
Seeded second in a field of 32, Barry and Bogard received a first-round bye and were perfect in eight sets en route to the title. They defeated No. 1 Austin Davidow and Alex Sacher of North Shore, 6-2, 6-3, in the finals. “When you have two talented players that get along really well, you’ve got the making of a strong doubles team,” Hirschbein-Bodnar said. “They never ran into any trouble.”
Barry, who is headed to Penn State, paired with classmate Eric Rubin, Long Beach’s No. 1 singles player this spring, to win the 2010 county doubles crown and finish third in the state. “They’re all confident players,” Hirshbein-Bodnar said.
Barry and Bogard, who reached the state semifinals at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow before falling in a shortened third-set [tiebreaker], opened the county tournament with a 10-1 second-round victory over Michael Schumber and Zach Cohen of Jericho. The Marines’ duo followed with a 10-2 win over Friends Academy’s Bhavin Vaid and Greg Rosenthal in the third round, a 6-3, 6-0 triumph over Great Neck South’s Raymond Zhou and Cooper Spector-Salwen in the quarterfinals, and a 6-2, 6-3 decision over Cold Spring Harbor’s Jonathan Paris and Conor Mullins in the semifinals.
“They’re quick to the ball and used an aggressive approach,” Hirshbein-Bodnar said of Barry and Bogard, who won three matches in the state tournament.
“It was a fabulous run,” she added. “The team they lost to in the state semifinals [Daniel Morgan and Doug Kaplan of Pelham] was just a little better under pressure.”
