LEXINGTON — Dylan Catanese already knew his tennis game was in a good place. On Monday night, it was in a great place.
With momentum on his side before he even stepped on the court, the Lexington junior-to-be rolled past high school teammate Cooper Remy 6-0, 6-0 for the boys 16-and-under singles title in the 90th News Journal Tennis Tournament.
After losing third set tiebreakers the last two years in the 16s to Karl Etzel, another Lex teammate, Catanese beat Etzel – the reigning Division II sectional and district singles champion – 6-3, 6-1 in the boys 18 semifinals
Catanese couldn’t have asked for a better tune-up for Monday night. And you can also throw in the boys 18 doubles title he won with Etzel over the weekend as another momentum-builder.
“I try to play as much as I can and just learn and try to get better every single day in practice,” Catanese said. “That’s definitely helped.”
Remy, one year behind Catanese in school, was also conceding a ton of experience. He started playing tennis at 6, but gave it up a couple of years later to play baseball with his buddies and didn’t pick up a racket again until last summer.
So he’s trying to catch up, a position you don’t want to find yourself in against a player the caliber of Catanese.
They treated fans at Lakewood Racquet Club to some long rallies, trading powerful groundstrokes on the fast indoor surface. But Catanese won most of those points, wearing his younger opponent down.
Remy didn’t come in often, but one time in particular stood out because Catanese lofted the ball over his head and watched it kiss the baseline. It was that type of night.
“This was my first championship match,” said Remy, who was so pumped up at the outset that he over-hit several balls in the first few games. “He was able to keep it in one more shot than me (on the long rallies). His serve is really good and he’s so tall you really can’t get past him at the net.
“I just wish I could have gotten a game.”
His time is coming. Coming off a three-year hiatus, Remy never imagined becoming a fixture in Lex’s lineup as a freshman or helping the Minutemen end up as the No. 2-ranked Division II team in the state this past spring.
“I was good at baseball, but I had a better chance (to have an impact) in tennis,” he said. “And coach Ron (Schaub, Lex’s head coach as well as Lakewood’s teaching pro and the News Journal Tournament director) kept asking me to come back, so I came back.”
Remy joined a Lex varsity whose No. 1 singles player and reigning Ohio Cardinal Conference Player of the Year is his older brother Ethan.
“He’s definitely gotten better,” Catanese said of Cooper. “It’s going to be great to have him on the team again. He’s going to be strong for us wherever we put him (singles or doubles).”
Catanese and the Remy brothers go to Columbus on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays to play with some of the best high school players in central Ohio at Scarborough East Tennis Club. Part-owners of the club are the Remys’ grandparents, Terry and Linda Remy. Linda was the tennis coach at Madison High School for six years and is able to keep a close eye on her grandsons as a freelance photographer for the News Journal.
Her photo galleries from this tournament have appeared on an almost daily basis on the News Journal website.
“Cooper keeps getting better,” Schaub said. “He’s working hard; I like his game. When we put him in the lineup, wherever he plays, he can do some good stuff. I kept telling him (before last season) we were one person shy when we lost Joseph Litao (who transferred to Ontario), and he finally decided to join us.”
Catanese has been all-in since he was 11. It’s almost hard to believe he just turned 16 in late April. His length makes him look more like a college freshman and he hits as hard as a lot of players at that level.
As a Lex freshman, he played No. 2 doubles most of the season and, come the post-season, fell just one win short of making it to state in singles. This past season, he mostly played No. 1 doubles with Jake Chilcote and then paired with Ethan Remy to win sectional and district doubles titles.
Catanese and Chilcote won the Medina Invitational together, while Catanese and Ethan Remy won doubles in the Lex Invite, which boasted one of the strongest fields of any regular season tournament in the state.
What happened in the OHSAA state tournament still eats at Catanese and drives him to be better. In their first round match he and Remy had leads of 5-3 in the first set and 5-4 in the first set tiebreaker, but couldn’t close it out. And Catanese was serving with a 2-1 lead in the third set only to get broken in what became a 7-6, 4-6, 6-3 loss to eventual runners-up Arick Baldwin and Noah Boyce of Dayton Oakwood.
Had Catanese and Remy won that opening match, they had a very do-able path to the finals. In the quarterfinals, they would have met a team from University School they had already beaten in the Medina Invite, and in the semis they would have been up against a Bexley team they beat in the Lex Invite.
“Dylan’s got a good game,” Schaub said. “He’s 6-2 or 6-3 and I think he’s going to be around 6-5 before he’s done. His work ethic is really good and he pops that forehand in there pretty good.”
Catanese’s win over Etzel put him in Tuesday night’s boys 18 finals against Ethan Remy, and those two will pair up on Thursday night at 5:30 p.m. in the round-robin Pickleball Tournament, which is part of this 90th News Journal. Catanese and Remy are two-time defending champs and will be part of a 15-team field that will include their fathers as partners.
In finals that took place over the weekend, Jade Adkins beat former Lex teammate Evie Hostettler for the girls 18 title, while Noel Cline and Jessica Farnsworth beat Adkins and Hannah Remy for the girls 18 doubles crown.
In girls 14 doubles, Emma Secrist and Sirar Ghamrawy – who met in the finals of the girls 14s and girls 12s – paired up to beat Hannah Remy and Jade Hunt for the title. It was the third championship in this tournament for Secrist.
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Full steam ahead: Catanese rides big win to even bigger win in the 90th NJ Tourney