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WATERVILLE — Last year, teams from Falmouth won the boys and girls doubles tennis titles by beating other Falmouth pairings.

After the opening rounds of this year’s tournament on Thursday, an intrasquad showdown in Saturday’s finals is still possible.

Falmouth, Brunswick, Thornton Academy and Yarmouth each have two teams alive in the boys bracket. A house divided is less likely on the girls’ side, as Falmouth is the only school with two pairs still playing.

Five round of 16 matches remain on the schedule for Friday, as each was postponed for the five players who qualified for the singles tournament at Bates, including 2024 boys champion Eli Sidhu (this year’s No. 1 seed, with Luke Kusel) and Gwen Long (the No. 1 girls seed, with Carley Iannetta). Sidhu and Long’s focus will return to doubles after both were knocked out of the singles tournament.

Here are three other takeaways from the first day of competition:

Adjustment necessary for indoor courts

Players learned Wednesday morning that they would be playing Thursday’s opening rounds indoors at the Colby College Fieldhouse, instead of outdoors at Edward Little High School in Auburn. Travel plans and game plans had to be adjusted.

Martin Hazlehurst and Michael Paules of Waterville had played multiple matches on the rubber track surface and knew to expect more speed and height off the bounce. The pair used that previous experience to their advantage, beating Boothbay’s Neal Baldwin and Avery Fowlie in the prelims and pushing Chan Park and Yuta Sato, the fourth-seeded pair from Thornton Academy, in the round of 16 before falling 6-2, 7-5.

“The ball bounces so high, so you get pushed,” Hazlehurst said. “Everybody’s really far back, so it’s really hard to deal with some spins sometimes. (On) the hard court, the ball is a little more predictable … I think (the rubber surface) plays into our style a little bit. We like to play those longer points, you know, big, long moon balls.”

Only one match was played outside. Scarborough’s Olivia Link and Calli Juhring beat Brewer’s Lydia Jordan and Delaney McDonough in straight sets.

Friday’s matches will return to Edward Little, as originally planned.

Familiarity helps returners find success

Five pairings across both brackets participated in last year’s tournament, but only two teams moved on to the quarterfinals.

Park and Sato from Thornton Academy were the only returning boys to win, and Arden Kondracki and Haley Blake from Medomak Valley were the only girls to advance. Both pairings reached the quarterfinals last year.

“He’s a really good partner,” Park said of Sato. “I’ve partnered with him since last year. Every time he’s struggling, I help him up. And when I’m struggling, he gives me encouragement and he gives me motivation and ambition to play back up and get those points back.”

Kondracki and Blake have known each other since kindergarten. This is their second year as doubles partners.

“We played some really, really good teams last year, and I feel like it made us realize that we’re better than we thought we were, in a way,” Kondracki said. “We’ve been taking it more seriously.”

Blake added: “It definitely also built our communication, our teamwork, and helped us with our regular season as well.”

Thornton survives two marathon matches

All of the boys’ matches were decided in straight sets, but four matches in the girls’ bracket went to a 10-point tiebreak. Thornton’s Anika Manning and Mao Saito won both of their matches in tiebreakers. The preliminary matchup against Camden Hills lasted approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes, and the round-of-16 upset over fourth-seeded Waynflete lasted about 2:10.

“At the beginning of the second match, I was kind of pressured,” Saito said. “We didn’t take enough breaks, we were both tired, our legs were so heavy.”

Manning added that the pair woke up in Saco at 4:30 a.m. to make it to Waterville and get warmed up before their 8 a.m. match.

“We were running on empty,” Manning said.

The other two tiebreaks were Addie Morneault and Helena Nelson of Falmouth over Reece McKenney and Gabby Chase of Brewer, and Lila McNaughton and Barbara Day of Yarmouth over Izzy Leitzell and Olivia Patient of Brunswick.