Northern Tier Sports ReportSOUTH WILLIAMSPORT — Towanda’s Bayley Poll ran into a buzzsaw that was Jersey Shore’s Ryder Fink in the District IV, Class AA Boys Singles Tournament Wednesday, falling 6-1, 6-0.
Fink is the defending District IV Champion, and won his 50th career match earlier this year.
Still, Poll came out undeterred, winning the first game to take a 1-0 lead.
From there, though, Fink was able to keep Poll off balance with a strong first serve and staying deep center during rallies, rattling off 12 straight games.
“It felt good to get out strong, but, obviously, I didn’t get the outcome I wanted,” Poll said. “I think I just started getting a little bit fatigued.”
Fink was content to play deep as Poll did his best to take it to him. He charged the net a few times but Fink wasn’t going to change his strategy.
“Those guys are harder to play when they’re like backboards, and they don’t miss anything,” said Poll. “It gets in your head mentally, as well, so it’s harder once you get down a set. My game plan was just to try to rally him, but that obviously didn’t work, so I had to try to go up to net, which did not end up working because I just couldn’t execute my volleys.”
Poll had his chances at the net, and even scored a few points from there, but also hit a few volleys into the net, or just missed wide.
“If I made some of those volleys I think I would have been in the match,” he said.
Still, its quite an achievement for the senior Black Knight as he’s the first from Towanda reach the District IV semifinals since David Rodenhizer in 2014.
“It feels good,” Poll said about ending the 12-year drought. “It was nice going up against some harder competition.”
He still has a shot at states at the District IV Doubles Tournament this Saturday. He’ll be paired with freshman Kellen Colton as they try to get into the top two pairs.
“Doubles is always fun to play and watch, so I’m pretty happy to do that,” Poll said. “Hopefully we can get pretty deep in that tournament as well.”
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PHOTOS BY CHRIS MANNING
