Parkland hasn’t played the cream of the crop in the local tennis world through its first four matches.

The Trojans have not only gone undefeated, but they’ve also taken four straight 7-0 wins. Dieruff, East Stroudsburg South, Freedom and Pleasant Valley all fell to the Trojans by shutout scores.

The lineup for Parkland is full of familiar faces from a team that went a perfect 12-0 in the EPC last season, finished 12-1 overall and went on to win the team district championship in a 4-0 match against Nazareth. Parkland advanced to states and went out in the first round with a 4-0 loss to Wissahickon. This year’s team, with more experience, hopes to go past what they did last season, with a potentially deep run into states.

“We have good kids,” said coach Mike Hingston. “There’s a good mix of kids who have some experience and then others who love the game and have talent, just need some experience. With the weather, it’s been tough to get a really good look at some of these guys, but we like what we see.”

Aneesh Kapoor, Nick Hawk and Alex Son have been holding down the singles lineup for Parkland, at least until they can go through a full complement of challenge matches, which has been tough to do because of the weather. All three have spotless records on the season, with Hawk having lost just three games through the early going.

Hawk, who along with Son was a doubles player last season, is adjusting well to life as a singles player.

Kapoor was the number-three singles player last season, but moves to the number-one spot vacated by graduate Nick Kshatri. P

arkland also lost number-two player Nate Lyman, who has had his spot filled by Hawk, with Son taking the number-three player for the Trojans.

“One and two are probably pretty well set,” said Hingston. “We would still like to go through some challenge matches and get more practice time on the court, because that hasn’t been possible with the bad weather, but we’ve got some depth that could play into things.”

As often happens early in the season, the doubles pairings are a little more fluid, but the pairing of Kishan Unjia and Jesse Hance has been a constant through the first four matches. The pair have won each game and should be a strong pairing throughout the season, even when the going gets a little tougher.

“We’ve got young kids who have been able to step in and play some doubles for us. Arvind Parthasarathy, Ryan Guzman, Sam Zahn, Jonah Grob; they have all helped in doubles and we’re very happy with what we’ve seen from them and where they are on our ladder right now.”

Because of the weather, half of the teams in the EPC have played two or fewer matches, with Liberty unable to get any of their schedule played.

That could be important later in the season as teams will have matches bunching up on consecutive days, which won’t be an issue for Parkland. That could keep the Trojans a little fresher going into the late season stretch and into the postseason.

“It really is because of our people here at the school who take care of the courts and work so hard on getting the snow off the courts and making them playable,” said Hingston. “Without them doing their job as well as they do, it would be a lot tougher and we’ve been fortunate.”

Hingston sees Liberty and Nazareth as being the two top competitors in the conference and sees his team as not being the easy pick to win the EPC this season. Hingston, who is in his fifth season as the team’s coach, has no problems with not being the consensus pick even though Parkland has a string of 12 straight conference championships on the line.

“I think Liberty and Nazareth are both very good, and Nazareth especially has a lot of depth,” reported Hingston. “A lot can happen though and it’s going to be interesting to see how they handle being the ones with more of a target than they’ve had in the past. That’s not always easy, and our guys know that feeling and how to compete, so we just have to play it out.”