The East Penn Conference Tennis Tournament began this past Saturday at Parkland High School where 11 players from Bethlehem Catholic, Freedom, and Liberty advanced to semifinals. The tournament was originally supposed to start Friday but was moved because of the rain.

Andrew Sinai, Freedom's number one singles player, will face Jon White from Pleasant Valley. Sinai shut out his opponents from Dieruff and Allentown Central Catholic in the round of 16 and in quarterfinals.

Also from Freedom, Aidan Bodeo-Lomicky will take on East Stroudsburg North's Isaac Schefer at number two singles after also shutting out his opponents from East Stroudsburg South and Allentown Central Catholic.

The number three singles brackets have one player from each of the Bethlehem high schools advancing to the semifinal round.

Liberty's Julian Mark defeated his opponents from Allen and Easton, Becahi's Peter Demyan defeated his opponents from Pocono Mountain West and East Stroudsburg South, and Freedom's Ross Sonnenblick won his matches against opponents from Central and Pocono Mountain East.

Demyan and Sonnenblick will face each other in semifinals.

At number two doubles, Becahi's John Corley and Luke Mesko defeated the doubles pairs from Central and Easton, and at number three doubles Liberty's Jesse Claudio and Luke Conrad won their matches against teams from Whitehall and Becahi.

Freedom's Matt Connors and Jon Fiorentino also advanced in number three doubles, winning their matches against Stroudsburg and Central.

Regarding their match against Central, Connors said, "We had a couple good points with them and pulled it out at the end."

Throughout that match, Freedom coach Jeff Young urged the pair to make some hard shots and increase the intensity.

In their first match of the day, Stroudsburg took an early 3-0 lead before the Patriots came back to win.

Fiorentino said, "They hit hard, and they were consistent. Then we started hitting hard. It came down to emotions. They couldn't keep their cool."

The tournament made it through the quarterfinal rounds in each of the singles and doubles classes. But according to reports, no immediate date was set to conclude the tournament, but it will likely be in two weeks after districts and all of the regular season matches are completed.