Rosa Earns Silver at NVL Tourney

Woodland senior number-one singles tennis player Joe Rosa recently tore his way through the Naugatuck Valley League tournament, making his way all the way to the finals before being forced into a medical forfeit in the final set against Rob Simons of Naugatuck. Rosa, who earned one of the four number-one seeds in the tournament (third-seeded overall), won two matches in the opening rounds last Thursday at Woodland before winning a semifinal match on Monday at Wolcott to advance to the championship. In the third and ultimate set, Rosa suffered from cramps throughout his body, concentrated in his legs, and he could not recover. Still, Rosa earned the silver medal, making him the highest-achieving Woodland singles player ever along with an All-NVL selection. Rosa will compete this week in the Class M state tournament at Yale.

Rosa accumulated a 13-5 record during the regular season, losing to Holy Cross, Torrington, and Wolcott once and Naugatuck twice. In the first two rounds of the NVL tournament, he beat players from Torrington (8-4) and Wolcott (6-0, 6-4). In Monday’s semifinal against Devin McNamara of Holy Cross, Rosa took a straight-set win, 6-4, 7-6 (7-2). In the final against Simons, Rosa won a first-set tiebreaker, 7-3, but lost the second set, 2-6. At 3-4 in the third, Rosa’s cramps became too much to handle, and the medic was forced onto the court for a second time, meaning Rosa had to forfeit.

“I expected to lose a couple matches in the regular season, although five losses was not where I wanted to be, but there was definitely more competition at number one….Coming into the tournament, I felt I had a good chance to win, and even in the last set against Rob, I felt I was going to come out on top. I started getting tired at the end of the first set of the championship; every time I hit, I felt like a muscle was going to pull, but I just kept going. I feel like it was going to be a good end to the match if I could have finished. It would have been down to the wire, and probably would have gone to another tiebreaker, and I felt that I could have come out on top because I had a lot of confidence. I was definitely pleased, but I was disappointed that my body let me down….My goal for states is to make it to the second or third round, but we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot of good competition.”