Cold Spring Harbor's team of J.P. Paris, Conor Mullins businesslike
Cold Spring Harbor juniors Conor Mullins and J.P. Paris celebrate victory in the Boys Doubles Championship match. (May 18, 2013) Credit: Steven Ryan
Just as their team did the entire season, Cold Spring Harbor's J.P. Paris and Conor Mullins dominated the Nassau individual championships from start to finish.
The two juniors dropped just five games in five matches to win the county doubles title, putting an exclamation point on the tournament with a 6-0, 6-0 victory in the final over Syosset's Henry Tell and Addison Berniker that took about 30 minutes to complete.
"We were pretty confident going in with the No. 1 seed," said Mullins, who helped CSH to a 14-0 record and Conference I title. "And right when we stepped on the court we felt something special was going to happen."
Added CSH coach Ben Marks: "It was clinical, really. I wasn't expecting it to be that fast but they went out with the intention of not giving up a single point, they fought for every ball and they came off and played very well."
Paris and Mullins played singles for CSH during the season, but the two have played doubles together in USTA events since middle school and have paired up for the county championships since eighth grade. They reached the state championships once before as freshmen after taking third place at counties two years ago.
"They haven't played much doubles during the season but they have before and they got back into the swing of things pretty fast," Marks said. "They're two top singles players, they both volley well, they both serve well and they're a tough doubles team to play against."
Added Mullins: "We've been playing doubles since we were 13 and even if we take a break we can pick it up and do well."
After receiving a first-round bye when the tournament began last week, Paris and Mullins cruised through the second and third round pro-sets with 10-1 wins over Massapequa's Joe Zappa and Bryan Bilski and then Roslyn's Scott Gartenberg and Jacob Pion. In the quarters, they beat Port Washington's Dan Lee and Chirag Doshi, 6-0, 6-0, and Saturday in the semis they earned a 6-2, 6-1 win over Plainview JFK's Josh Young and Yuval Solomon, who later clinched the third-place doubles bid to the state championships. "When we get our serves in we can finish points at the net and that makes things easier," Paris said. "We feel pretty confident right now and will definitely have a lot of confidence going into states."
