As singles players, Parkland's Peter Harrison and Nick Kshatri are two of the top high school tennis players in the area. Putting them together to form a doubles team spells trouble for the rest of District 11.

Harrison and Kshatri proved that Monday when they quickly worked their way to a 6-2, 6-2 win over Pleasant Valley's Erik Ammermann and Jon White to win the District 11 doubles championship, which will send them to the PIAA Tournament in Hershey on May 22 and 23.

While Harrison and Kshatri won the doubles title, the Parkland team of Aneesh Kapoor and Alex Wu were also awarded their third place medals after the championship match.

As it turns out, serves played a major part in deciding the outcome of the match for both sides. Parkland was able to break serve four times in the match, while Pleasant Valley was unable to break a serve against Parkland.

Being able to handle serves, especially from White, was a part of the game plan for Harrison and Kshatri, who both knew that they would need to break serve if they were to have a shot at winning the match.

"We returned Jon's serve pretty well," said Harrison, who is a senior. "We knew that Jon has a massive serve because we've seen him through juniors and through tournaments, so we weren't expecting to be able to break him, but we broke one of his serves and that was nice."

Pleasant Valley came in wary of Parkland's serve capabilities as well, but simply wasn't able to find ways to break serve.

"Both of them are very good servers, they place them so well, so it's tough to return and break, definitely," said Jon White after the match.

White's big serve led Pleasant Valley to win the first game of the first set, but Parkland immediately turned things around and rattled off wins in five straight games, before Pleasant Valley won a game to make it 5-2.

The eighth game of the set was a battle, but Parkland came out on top to win 6-2. The Bears again went up 1-0 in the second set behind White's serves, but Parkland broke serve in the third game to go up 2-1 and stretched the lead to 3-1. With White serving, Pleasant Valley had to battle, but picked up a win and were right back in the match at 3-2.

Parkland held serve in game six and was able to break Ammermann's serve in game seven before closing out the match.

"We always have to be wary of our opponent's serve and to be able to hold serve, comfortably, in almost every game was a big key," said Kshatri.

Harrison and Kshatri, who is a junior, battled White and John Walmach in last year's district finals and came up short. This time around, they were able to give at least a little payback for that disappointing loss. It was also a pleasant turn of events for Kshatri, who lost in the district singles finals a week before, but will still make the trip to Hershey as a district champion.

While Harrison and Kshatri didn't allow themselves to look past the match with Pleasant Valley, they were able to come up with some ideas on just how successful they might be when they reach Hershey in two weeks.

"Just keep doing what we're doing. Hold serve, approach, be aggressive at the net and make our returns," said Harrison.

Kshatri was realistic about Parkland's chances, but also knows that he and his partner form a pretty formidable pair on a tennis court.

"I think we have a good chance at winning in the first couple rounds," said Kshatri. "Obviously, the competition is a lot tougher than here, but we should be contenders. It's just a matter of playing our game and hopefully, it works out in the end."