The Rye Boys Tennis team defeated John Jay-East Fishkill after losing to Horace Greeley to open their last week of the regular season. The Garnets fell 4-3 to the Quakers on Monday, May 11, and won in a 7-0 sweep on Tuesday the 12th to close out the 2026 campaign, save for both team and individual playoff formats.
“Our Rye team was spirited in their support the entire match and everyone played their hearts out,” Head Coach Sue Dickson said after the loss to Greeley on Monday. “Although a loss is never easy, it was a good outing. If we can get over the tiebreaker hump, nothing will hold us back. This group has a lot of unity. I’m proud of them.”
The decisive loss came in a tiebreaking third set at third doubles, where Philip Karajannis and Dylan Smailes came up just short after winning set one. The other three doubles teams won, including a remarkable comeback effort from Carter Hudspeth and Nate Bertisch in their second set. Rye fell to Idan Yedid, Henry Xue, and Drew Novick at all three singles spots respectively, which was the difference in the match alongside a supertiebreaker win for the Quakers at third doubles.
The loss was the final league contest for the Garnets, who dropped to 10-4. They rebounded the following day for a comfortable win over John Jay-East Fishkill, where the Garnets won all three singles and all four doubles matches.
“With an alternative line up, the three captains bowed out of competition so the lineup was filled with many teams playing different positions or spots,” Dickson told MyRye.com. “This was a good way to round out a busy couple of weeks where the players were juggling three matches a week during the two AP testing weeks at school. They have hung in during tough situations and are handling the pressure pretty well.”
Marcos Becker, Timothy Morell, and senior Nate Bertisch all won at singles, with Bertisch winning 6-2, 6-4 in his singles debut. Xavier Morell and Tayga Vural clinched a very close win at top doubles 6-7, 6-1 (10-8). The other Garnets to win in doubles were Karajannis, Smailes, Hudspeth, Raj Patel, Aran Subramanian, and CJ Loizeaux.
Rye (11-4) will spend the coming days practicing for the postseason, including the individual sectional tournament this weekend and the team sectional tournament a few days later.
