By M.S.Phillips

The last four seniors of the Division 4 Hopedale tennis team won their respective matches to clinch the CMASS finals on Friday, May 26th at Assabet Regional High School. 

Hopedale has won this sectional tournament for the past 6 years (excluding 2020 due to covid) . 

This year Hopedale, who moved up a class, faced a very tough Division 1 team from Marlboro High School. 

Needing 3 points to win the match, the team relied heavily on it’s senior players with some matches lasting almost 3 hours long. 

2nd Singles player and Co-Captain, Jack Phillips faced a strong opponent, but won in straight sets, securing the team’s first point .

The 1st doubles team of Dylan Dziok and Cam Whiting rallied from down 1-5 in the 3rd set to win their match as well. 

With daylight waning, the remaining 1st singles match, had to enter into a shortened “first to 10 point”  3rd superset with Hopedale’s Co-Captain, Luke Tahmoush winning in dramatic fashion 13-11 as darkness fell.

This final point sealed the CMASS title for Hopedale with the team winning 3-2!

The team and families celebrated at center court with a brief awards ceremony and received their plaque and followed with a small parade through town escorted by Hopedale Police. 

The team, thrilled to have coach Alex Laumeister come back for their final senior year, played an amazing season against some tough Division 1 teams from Algonquin and Shrewsbury. 

 They ended their season with an impressive 15-5 record, falling to Nantucket 2-3 in the State finals round of 16. 

Several of these boys got their start in pre-school playing the sport during their summers at the Hopedale Parks Department’s Tennis Program under the guidance of then Parks Director, Barry Gorman and  have played on the HS tennis team since 7th grade.  

These past three years have been a challenge for both the Girls and Boys Tennis teams having to play all “away games” due to the town park’s tennis court conditions and sometimes traveling well over an hour to matches. 

Special thanks to all the bus drivers and our Athletic Director, Stephanie Ridolfi for juggling the travel logistics including scheduling towns to play and finding neutral courts for tournaments.

Next years team of underclassmen will look to follow in this year’s performance .