Tennis: Crusaders slip past Marist

Rich Daniels had the date marked on his calender for quite some time.

When neighborhood rivals Brother Rice and Marist get together on the tennis court, or any other sport for that matter, it tends to cause some excitement.

Monday afternoon at Marist, it was Daniels and his Crusaders teammates who walked away happy following a 3-2 nonconference victory over the RedHawks.

"This is a match that you just can't lose," said Daniels, who teamed up with fellow senior Tom O'Shea at first doubles to score a 6-7, 6-2, 6-4 triumph over Marist's Jon Anderson and Brian Szubrych. "I put a star next to this one on my calender when we first got our schedule for this year. As a senior, you want to play as hard as you can against these guys and make sure that you come out a winner."

"You almost have to beat these guys," O'Shea said. "You don't want to go an entire year with them having bragging rights."

Brother Rice (6-6) picked up a win at No. 2 singles as Bill Gilhooly knocked off Egon Menker 6-1, 6-0. The Crusaders' second doubles tandem of Mike Montag and Mark Behncke also triumphed 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 over Mark Bradley and Brian Hyland.

"Marist is a great program and John [Hyland, Marist's coach] does a great job teaching his kids and producing competitive players," Brother Rice coach Marty Grogan said. "This is a tough rivalry and on the court it's certainly all business. But, once we're done playing, it's very friendly.

"I really like the way that our doubles teams performed today. We would have liked to take all three doubles matches, but it was great to see them all battle and go to three games."

Marist (3-8) triumphed at No. 1 singles as freshman Alex Haizel beat James Hansen 6-2, 6-0 and also at No. 3 doubles as the duo of Kevin Johnson and Jim Triezenberg bested Pete Gribble and Mike Hogan 3-6, 6-4, 6-4.

"We played hard today, as we always do," Hyland said. "But, I think we are still improving and getting better every day.

"We actually just started playing each other head-to-head a couple of years ago. We had played Brother Rice in tournaments before and figured since we're both in the same sectional, it'd be a good idea to play, especially due to the natural rivalry that we have with both schools being in the same neighborhood."

With Haizel coming into Monday's match with a 13-5 overall record, Hyland and the RedHawks have plenty to be excited about.

"Having a quality freshman to anchor down that No. 1 spot really helps," Hyland said. "We knew he was a good player coming in and he really has does some nice things for us. Hopefully some of our other younger guys can step up and make some contributions too."