FOURTH POWER: Princeton Day School boys’ tennis star Lex Decker slams a forehand in a match this spring. Last Thursday, sophomore Decker won the title at second singles at the Prep B state championships, helping PDS to its fourth straight team title at the competition. Senior Scott Altmeyer won the first singles crown for the Panthers while juniors Leo Nye and Noah Liao were the victors at second doubles. PDS piled up 11 points in the team standings with Rutgers Prep and Gill St. Bernard’s tying for second with six. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

As the Princeton Day School boys’ tennis team hit the court for the opening rounds of the state Prep B tournament last week, it was taking the first steps in its pursuit of a fourth straight title.

In getting his players ready for the competition, though, PDS head coach Will Asch wasn’t dwelling on going after the impressive feat.

“We don’t talk winning or losing that much,” said Asch. “We really talk more about are we ready, are we prepared, have we been practicing well, and are we going to play our best.”

In the first day of action at Wardlaw-Hartridge on May 22, the Panthers showed they were more than ready to play their best, advancing to the finals in four of the five flights of the competition, clinching the team title before the finals were even played.

“They have practiced hard, it is a very good group,” said Asch.

“We did a good job from the top down; it is always hard to be good on both ends, I find.”

While the finals last Thursday were icing on the cake, Asch wanted his players to keep doing their jobs.

“We wanted everybody to be very prepared, we wanted them to play their best,” said Asch, whose squad totaled 11 points in the team standings with Rutgers Prep and Gill St. Bernard’s tying for second with six.

“It is very anticlimactic if we win the title on Sunday and then go home losing a lot of matches in the finals. We won three of four matches, we lost in first doubles but we won the other three.”

At first singles, senior Scott Altmeyer gutted out some tough matches to win the title.

“Scott had a little bit of a tough match in his second round match (against Mark Nagpal of Morristown-Beard) but he played serve and volley and he won like 14 points in a row,” recalled Asch.

“When he started to play serve and volley, he was serving kick serves to the boy’s backhand and the serve comes up pretty high and the boy couldn’t handle it. He kind of ran away with the match that way. If he hadn’t figured that out, it might’ve been a tough match. In the finals, Scott went three sets but the boy that he played (Satish Kumar of Wardlaw-Hartridge) got cramps in the third set. It was a close match and then he started to cramp and it was over.”

Sophomore Lex Decker cruised to the crown at second singles, not dropping a set in three matches.

“Lex is a legit No. 1 singles, on most prep school teams, he would be No. 1,” said Asch. “Nobody really competed with him, he pretty much blew everybody away.”

The first doubles pair of Jacob Chang and Vivek Sharma produced some dramatic rallies to advance to the championship round before losing to Sean Lau and Kurosh Keyvan of Rutgers Prep in the final.

“Our first doubles has been a little bit off but they had two great comeback wins on Sunday,” said Asch.

“Vivek Sharma had a bad blister on his right hand and he fought his way through it eventually. For a while he could hardly hit the ball, that was very tough for him. He started to realize that losing would hurt a lot more than his blister.”

In Asch’s view, the second doubles team of Nye and Liao showed a winning spirit as they prevailed in a three-setter against Dhruva Mulye and Zach Osman of Rutgers Prep to earn the crown in their flight.

“Leo Nye and Noah Liao really did a great job and improved unbelievably,” said Asch.

“They really worked very hard and second doubles particularly had a very good finish on the season. They had two really big wins for us on Sunday and they started to beat some very strong teams.”

Senior captain Altmeyer set the tone for the Panthers when it came to work ethic. “We have had many good singles players over the years but having Scott was really great,” asserted Asch.

“Scott was a wonderful leader for us. He is a senior and seniors are not always available, they have other things going on but he wasn’t like that. Scott loves to play. He would come out and play every day. He loves that and that was very important.”

Asch, for his part, believes that passion for the game is the foundation for the PDS title streak.

“I think it says that we have continuity in our program, kids are attracted to the school for the tennis program,” asserted Asch, in reflecting on the championship. “Kids work hard when they play tennis for us and stay with the program.”