The Palo Alto High School boys’ tennis team triumphed over Gunn High School today with a score of 4-3. The win brings Paly (17-2, 10-1 league) into a first-place tie with Gunn (15-1, 9-1 league).

It was the first Titan loss of the season in league play.

“This was a great match. We don’t get into dog fights very often,” Paly coach Andy Harader said. “It was nice to see that every single match was competitive.”

The four wins came from junior Kushal Tantry at the one singles spot, sophomore Sam Wong at the two singles spot, seniors Matt Severson and Kyle Shulman at the one doubles spot, and sophomores Alan Chen and Cory McCroskey at two doubles.

Surprisingly, most of the matches were decided in a third set. Severson said that Paly had been preparing for this type of match-up all season.

The only singles player to avoid a third set was Wong, number two on the team, who won his match 7-5, 7-5. Wong rallied back from 2-5 in both sets.

“Sam played an incredible match and had a very good opponent,” Harader said after the match.

“I was just playing point by point, trying not to think about the score,” Wong said after the match.

It turned out that Wong’s late comebacks may have been the most pivotal match.

While Paly lost two of the four single matches, the team dominated in doubles, winning two out of the three. Both winning doubles teams were down in their matches, but managed to pull out the wins.

At number one doubles, Severson and Shulman made a sizable comeback in a difficult first set in a 6-3, 7-5 victory.

“Our technique was stellar,” Severson said. “After we were down in the first set, we started changing up our strategy.”

In the first singles spot, Tantry had a close match throughout. Unfortunately, opposing number one Alex Liu defaulted after a severe muscle cramp took him out of action early in the third set.

The cramp started in Liu’s lower calves but soon spread up into his hamstrings. After attempting to play another point, Liu retired from the match.

The final score of their match lay unfinished at 6-3, 5-7, 1-0 (30-15).

“It’s really a shame our match had to end on that kind of a note,” Tantry said after the match. “He was really starting to pick it up. It would have been a battle to the finish.”

Nonetheless, Tantry’s match was the clincher for Paly, giving them the 4-1 lead with two matches still on court.

Junior David Plotkin was the last off the courts with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 loss to Daniel Ugarte of Gunn at three singles.

Sophomore Dan Schwartz also won his first set, but could not finish off opponent Alex Klein in a 4-6, 6-1, 6-1 loss in the four singles spot.

After losing Gunn 4-3 in a match earlier this year, Paly was excited to turn it around in the deciding meeting.

“We played [Gunn] outside of school before, so we knew what to expect,” sophomore Alan Chen said.

Despite the hard felt competition, Paly takes pride in the performances of both teams.

“It’s nice to see two Palo Alto leagues beat up all the other teams in the league,” Harader said.

Harader hopes for the team to place in CCS this year, and plans to move up to the De Anza League next season.

The win pulls Paly into a tie with Gunn for first place, but it looks as though Paly would win the tiebreaker for most matches won outside of league.

Paly finishes its regular season at Milpitas on Tues.