Aarav Shah wants to win a Section 9 boys’ tennis championship.

The Newburgh Free Academy senior placed third in the section as a singles competitor and earned a berth in the New York State championship meet last year.

This year, he’s taking a different route and teamed with sophomore Henry Goings-Perrot.

It’s working so far. The duo won the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association championship with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Cornwall’s Ryan Geller and Dev Patel on Friday at MatchPoint Tennis Center in Goshen.

“It feels great,” Shah said. “We just played our game. We knew we had it. We were the first seed. So, if we just played our game, we had it, and we we stuck to our game plan and got the wins.”

Geller and Patel, the tournament’s third seeds, weren’t going to make it easy, taking a one-game lead in both sets. They even led, 2-3 in the second set, but Shah and Goings-Perrot won the next two to take a 4-3 lead.

“It definitely got in their heads a little bit,” Goings-Perrot said. “They saw us coming back.”

The two teams battled a close game that Shah and Goings-Perrot to take a 5-4, lead and then, with Shah serving, blew Geller and Patel off the court to claim the championship.
Goings-Perrot described the championship as “surreal”, as he had never advanced so far in the OCIAA tournament before.

The stakes only get higher this week, as they could see Keller and Patel again in the Section 9 tournament on Wednesday and Thursday at MatchPoint.

“I feel like if we just play our game, we’ll be the first team in sections, too,” Shah said. “If we just play our game, think we should be able to win.”

They won’t be the only Newburgh team to advance to the sectional tournament. Emilien Boyer and Alex Cestaro won two matches to reach the quarterfinals, good enough to qualify for the sectional tournament.

They opened the tournament with a win over Cornwall’s Dan Commy and Tyler Lane. They also beat Valley Central’s Sean Watson and Marco Collarelli.

However, they lost their quarterfinal match to Middletown’s Jaden Jones and Aaron Jones, who fell to Keller and Patel in three sets in the semifinals.

Shah and Goings-Perrot dispatched their semifinal opponents – Washingtonville’s Paul Nischan and Matt Medina – quickly, giving them additional rest between matches.

“It gave us time to analyze our opponents like, how they’re gonna play,” Shah said. “They played great. They had a great match.”

The Goldbacks didn’t enter any players into the singles tournament.