Nassau tennis teams play with heavy hearts after LI teens killed
Brian Berger of Jericho back hands the return during a Nassau tennis match against Hewlett on Monday in Jericho. Credit: Dawn McCormick
The sights and sounds were familiar enough on Monday as Nassau boys tennis took its first steps forward after a week of unimaginable tragedy. The feeling, however, was anything but normal.
The teams from Hewlett and Jericho paused before taking to the courts for a moment of silence to honor the memories of Drew Hassenbein and Ethan Falkowitz, who were killed Wednesday night when an alleged wrong-way drunken driver crashed his pickup truck into the car they were riding home in after they helped their defending county champion Roslyn team defeat Syosset.
Wheatley players scrawled the initials of the two eighth graders and put hearts on their sneakers and racket handles before the Wildcats hosted Great Neck South.
Nadav Farahnik of Wheatley shows his racket with the initials of Drew Hassenbein and Ethan Falkowitz to honor his fellow tennis players during a Nassau high school tennis match on Monday, May 8, 2023 in Wheatley. Credit: Dawn McCormick
Wheatley tennis players honor Drew Hassenbein and Ethan Falkowitz by writing their initials in their honor on their sneakers during a tennis match on Monday, May 8, 2023 in Wheatley. Credit: Dawn McCormick
A funeral for Falkowitz was held on Friday and another for Hassenbein on Sunday. Jericho coach Wayne Schuster and six Jayhawks attended Hassenbein’s funeral the day before, as did senior Stephan Gershfeld of Hewlett.
“It was a very emotional service with a lot of anguish,” said Gershfeld, the 2022 state singles champion. “Drew was a very good friend — and we’d grown very close over the past year. He was like a little brother to me. And I have deep condolences for [Ethan’s] family. Something like this should never happen.”
Gershfeld recounted speaking with Hassenbein’s mother after their first singles match on April 24. “I told her that he would soon have this title I have and that he would win it for many years," Gershfeld said. " . . . Today, I feel like a piece of me is missing.”
“I don’t think there’s any member of our team who isn’t still in shock,” Jericho’s Ajer Sher said. “I had played him just six days before and it’s insane that he’s been taken from our world. We are playing again but we are also just trying to handle the emotions.”
Jericho’s Nicholas Chin was so overcome with emotions over the weekend that he adorned two tennis balls with the initials of the players killed and laid them aside a tree at the crash site on Saturday afternoon.
Jericho eighth grader Nicholas Chin prepared these tennis balls and then laid them at the accident site on Saturday. Credit: Roger Rubin
“The whole tennis community was shaken,” Chin said. “This wasn’t right for two people at such a young age.”
It wasn’t just the local tennis community either. Schuster said friends from Philadelphia, Connecticut and New Jersey attended Hassenbein’s funeral. Gershfeld said that competitors from Poland and Ukraine had reached out to him to communicate their grief.
“Hearts are broken all over the world,” he said.
Schuster said that postponing the Monday match against Hewlett, which Jericho won 6-1, was a consideration but “as sad and tragic as this is, these kids need to keep living.”
“We have counselors at school and they can talk to me, but I told each of them that talking to their parents was most important,” Schuster said.
Other tributes are in the planning stages. Jericho’s Anish Pylla said the Jayhawks planned to wear shirts with the likeness of Falkowitz and Hassenbein in the near future. Hewlett plans to hold a fundraiser for S.A.D.D., where players will team with teachers to compete in matches.
Monday’s highly-anticipated first singles matchup between Gershfeld and Sher didn’t transpire as the 2022 Newsday Player of the Year is sidelined with a wrist injury. However, the Jayhawks’ Brian Berger and Bulldogs’ Ryan Weinman held everyone’s attention. Berger rallied from behind for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 win at third singles for Jericho (5-5). He called it “100% my best match of the season.”
“I was thinking of Drew and how he [played] through that whole match,” Berger said. “This win was for him.”
Hewlett’s Alexander "Sasha" Sherman won in straight sets at second singles and is now 11-0 on the season.
Great Neck South topped Wheatley, 7-0, to improve to 6-3. Wheatley’s Nathan Shirazi, Aaron Rayhan, Nadav Farahnik and Aaron Raja paid tribute to the two Roslyn teens with the markings on their sneakers and rackets.
Gershfeld said he plans to honor Hassenbein and Falkowitz when he tries to defend his county singles title “and if I win, those trophies will be for those two boys. They will be the county champions.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
