Jeremy Lim and Nick Rohn paired up for a long climb through the District XI AAA Boys Doubles brackets last week, giving Whitehall a dynamic duo that was just one step away from the finals.

Lim and Rohn were competing at the district doubles tourney which began at Lehigh University for the opening round, and then later switched to Saucon Valley High School midweek as they played in unseasonably hot weather. However, they overcame the heat and three opponents to make it to the semifinals.

They eventually lost in the semis to the Nazareth combo of Gabe Knowles and Nate Tauber, succumbing 6-1, 6-1 to the tourney’s No. 1 seed. However, Tauber and Knowles lost in the finals to the Liberty duo of Louis Gruber and David Lynn, 6-2, 6-0.

Last year Lim and Rohn made it to the quarterfinals before losing to Liberty’s Lynn and Luke Conrad. This year they took it a step further, withstanding long matches, two of which went to tiebreakers en route to their semifinal run.

One of those came last Tuesday at Saucon Valley where temperatures approached 80 degrees. They were paired against the East Stroudsburg South team of Cody Cox and Dymtro Petrov, and found themselves embroiled in a tough first set that needed to go to a tiebreaker. They grinded out a tough 7-6 (8-6) victory in that set, and then breezed to a 6-3 win in the second set to win the match.

In the second set, Lim and Rohn proved why they’re such a strong, complementary team. Rohn would rocket a serve that had the opponent playing defensively, sending back a weak volley where Lim would deftly put away a winner at the net. They did this a number of times. Additionally, Lim’s ability to put pressure on their opponent from the baseline also gave then an advantage throughout the match, and that allowed Rohn to step in at times and put down a winner in the forecourt.

Because their first set went to tiebreaker, they were one of the last two teams still playing on that hot afternoon when the tourney reconvened at Saucon Valley. Lim eventually won the match with an ace to catapult them into the semifinals.

The pair began the tourney with a win over Emmaus’ Grant Haffner and Kevin Ge, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3. They followed that with a win over Nazareth’s Brian Smith and Connor Willans, 6-3, 6-2.

The season is now over for the Zephyr boys tennis team as they’ll begin preparing for the offseason.