Global Travel No Obstacle For Monomoy Boys Tennis

NORTH EASTHAM – The return leg of a Monomoy Regional High School trip during April break to Australia — between the layovers and the sheer distance — took 40 hours.

The group reached home Wednesday of last week. Senior Ethan Seufert still made it in time to tennis practice.

“He got back in the afternoon and hopped right on the court,” head coach Reuben Bowman said.

Then two days later, Seufert — still reeling from traveling around the world — won his second singles match as the Sharks beat Nauset 4-1 last Friday.

“I was feeling it in my legs a lot, but in the second set towards the end, just trying to get myself hyped up and as energized as possible, just to move around better,” Seufert said. “He definitely put me through my paces.”

Sophomore Roman Pavluchenko defeated senior Dusty O’Campbell 6-0, 6-1 in first singles, and Seufert beat senior Will Christopher 6-2, 6-4 in the Monomoy win. Senior Patrick McMahon and junior Tom Hereford beat freshman Tyler Flanders and sophomore Andrew Tobin 6-4, 6-1 in first doubles, and sophomores Khush Patel and Romani Thomas bested senior Bennett McKenna and freshman Charlie Cronin 6-1, 6-1 in second doubles.

For Nauset (2-7), senior Wyatt Carroll defeated eighth grader John Sene 6-0, 6-3.

The lineup of the Sharks (7-4) has seen much change since last season’s run to the state tournament quarterfinals as the third seed in Division 4. Seufert is up at second singles after playing second doubles last year. Going to practice right after getting back from the other side of the planet was testament to the work and effort put in to jump into that spot. His former doubles partner Hereford has played third singles and first doubles. Multiple players have rotated through third singles as the team juggles injuries and experiments with doubles combinations to find the right chemistry. The constant has been the steady presence of Pavluchenko at first singles.

“He's going to beat most people that he comes across, so we can kind of lean on him a little bit,” Seufert said. “If we figure out our doubles and where we can put most of our bang for our buck in doubles, I feel like we can edge out a win on one of these harder teams.”

What with the occasional unending rally, the games stuck at deuce and the long tiebreaks to decide sets, tennis can sometimes be a trying sport of endurance.

Good thing the Nauset boys tennis team has two experienced cross country runners steering the top of the Warriors lineup. Nothing tests the cardio limits of body and mind like cross country. After all, the sport is the punishment of other sports, as the saying goes.

With Dusty O’Campbell and Will Christopher at first and second singles respectively, there’s little concern that Nauset’s lead players will ever run out of juice. Last fall, the two seniors ran at the front of a Warriors cross country team that went undefeated in dual meets. Stamina and speed, as it would follow, are O’Campbell’s two main characteristics on the tennis court.

“It's definitely nice to have the background of having been a runner,” O’Campbell said.

The two sports are of course very different. But there’s an overlap, according to O’Campbell, on the mental side. 

“It's a lot [of] just you being in your head,” he said. “And because, I mean, they're both pretty grueling sports, it's definitely long, drawn out and hard, so it's mostly the mental aspect more than the physical that's similar.”

O’Campbell is on the team after spending previous springs running outdoor track. Christopher has played tennis for Nauset since freshman year. The two “have a base of endurance,” head coach Andy Lisle said.

“Will will stay out there forever,” Lisle said. “Like yeah, I've never seen him tired. Never seen Dusty tired.”