Strength in singles leads Belleville East by Althoff

The depth of the Belleville East Lancers boys tennis program continued to pay huge dividends on chilly Tuesday in its annual city showdown with Althoff.

Highly touted young freshman Max Skaer fought off a stiff challenge from Althoff’s Donovan McKnight to score a 6-2, 6-3 win for the Lancers and Skaer’s five teammates also won in straight sets to lead a sweep in singles as Belleville East rolled to a 7-2 victory over Althoff in a nonconference tennis match.

On the same night Belleville East hosted Granite City in Southwestern Conference match, coach Dan Skaer’s split squad had little trouble in singles as it dropped just a total of 17 games in 12 sets against an inexperienced Althoff squad.

The Crusaders, in the midst of a transition period under first-year coach Brian Zaron, managed to win two of the three doubles matches. But it wasn’t enough to stop the Lancers from improving to 7-5 for the season.

“We split up the varsity. Half of them played here against Althoff and the other half played at home against Granite City. I thought we played well in singles here tonight,” Belleville East coach Dan Skaer said. “Winning all six singles matches was good to see. We’re playing a lot of kids who are still fairly new to varsity tennis but I like what I see. We’re improving.”

Key sequence

Taking on an Althoff team which is young and still learning the tennis ropes under Zaron, Belleville East used the win by Max Skaer over McKnight and wins at No. 2 singles from Austin Klug and No. 3 from Ethan Pickard to size early command of the match. Klug blanked Devin Piper 6-0, 6-0 and Pickard scored a 6-1, 6-1 win over Stephen Waltrip.

Also winning matches for the Lancers were Josh Thomas, Zach Buescher and Aaron Denbow.

But one of the highlights of the night for Belleville East was the play of Max Skaer. The youngest of three brothers to play at East, Skaer overcame a much-improved McKnight by using his solid all-court game.

“Max went through a period where he struggled with his game, but in these last couple of weeks he has really played some high level singles,” Dan Skaer said of his son.

Crusaders bounce back in doubles

In just his second full week as the Crusaders coach, Zaron had to like what he saw on Tuesday from his young squad — especially in doubles. Klug and Pickard needed a third set tiebreaker to defeat the enthusiastic McKnight and Piper 3-6, 6-3, 10-8 in the No. 1 match, while Althoff’s Waltrip and Jimmy Monken won a third set tiebreaker in the No. 2 flight.

The Crusaders’ David Osthoff and Stone Galloway won the No. 3 doubles match.

“We’re coming along. Some of these kids have only played in three or four matches. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but I like what I see from these kids. They are all working hard and have a lot of desire to want to learn and get better,” Zaron said. “It’s still early in the season and if we keep progressing like I think we will, we’ll be just fine. I’m having a great time working with and coaching these kids.”

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 9:31 PM with the headline "Strength in singles leads Belleville East by Althoff."