The District 2 boys tennis singles tournament featured 45 matches Thursday at Kirby Park and the Wilkes University courts, all to arrive right as expected with the top four seeds making the semifinals in both Class 3A and Class 2A.
Those players will return to Kirby Park Friday at 1 p.m. for the district semifinals, which will be followed, after a short break, by the finals.
Top-seed and defending champion Praneel Mallaiah from Abington Heights leads the Class 3A field while defending champion Akhilesh Velaga from Scranton Prep and top seed Tristan Vivona from Western Wayne are among the Class 2A semifinals.
Abington Heights, the unbeaten Lackawanna League and District 2 Class 3A champion, is the only team with two players remaining.
Mallaiah will take on Valley View’s fourth-seeded Luke Kotcho while third-seeded Sam Christman meets second-seeded Michael Hamel from Wilkes-Barre Area.
Vivona faces Wyoming Seminary’s Bill Hall in an all-freshman semifinal Velaga faces Riverside’s Anthony Ghigiarelli in a rematch of last year’s semifinal that Velaga won.
There was not a single upset of a seeded player in three rounds of play Thursday.
The eight seeded Class 2A players and six seeded Class 3A players all made the quarterfinals where the four highest seeds advanced in straight sets.
Mallaiah and unbeaten Hamel appeared to be a collision course for a championship rematch when neither lost a game, posting consecutive 6-0, 6-0 victories.
None of the four seeded Class 3A players lost more than three games in any set.
The only semifinalist in either tournament to go any deeper in a set was Velaga, who was pushed to a first-set tiebreaker by Luca DeRome from unbeaten district team champion Dallas before advancing to the quarterfinals with a 7-6 (7-2), 6-2 victory.
Vivona’s streak of 11 straight 6-0, 6-0 victories came to an end when Zak Keiser from Tunkhannock became the first player this season to win two games against him in the same set during a 6-2, 6-0 quarterfinal loss.
Ghigiarelli is making his third straight semifinal appearance despite Riverside not having a team and therefore not playing a regular high school schedule.
