Coming into the PIAA Class 2A boys tennis semifinals Saturday morning, there was a chance the Class 2A singles and doubles finals would be all-WPIAL affairs.
As it turned out, it was an all-Sewickley Academy kind of day.
Senior Luke Ross capped off his high school career with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over District 3 champion William Wanner of Lancaster Mennonite, while Ryan Gex and Neil Rana became the first WPIAL doubles team to win the PIAA Class 2A championship with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over District 11 champions Abbhl Sekar and Oliver Scott of Moravian Academy.
No WPIAL doubles team had even made it into the Class 2A championship before this year, but Gex and Rana ended 18 years of frustration with a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Will Schreck and Ben Croft of Wyomissing. Gex, the first four-time WPIAL doubles champion, and Rana, his first-year partner and a 2016 PIAA qualifier, then made history with their win in the finals.
Ross also put the finishing touch on his stellar career as he became the first WPIAL singles player to repeat as a PIAA champion since Jack Waltz of Mt. Lebanon won three in a row from 1961-63. The Georgetown recruit had to outlast District 1 champion Adrian Roji of New Hope Solebury, a Wesleyan (Conn.) recruit, in a 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 semifinals battle.
With victories in the singles and doubles, coupled with the Panthers team repeating as PIAA champions last week, Sewickley Academy joined Harriton in 2004 and Lower Moreland in 2008 as the only schools since tennis was first recognized as a team sport in 1999 to sweep all three PIAA Class 2A championships in the same year. It has never happened in Class 3A.
Peters Township’s Connor Bruce also had an opportunity to put his name in the record books as the first WPIAL freshman to win the Class 3A singles title. But the fourth-ranked player in the state in the Class of 2020 lost in the semifinals to No. 2 freshman Matthew Robinson of Lower Merion, 6-3, 6-3.
First Published: May 28, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
