PITTSFIELD – It was hard to decide what the Lincoln Academy boys were more excited about: winning their opening match of the season or just being outside, playing tennis, on a real court.

“After the kind of spring we’ve had, it’s just good to get outside,” said Lincoln Academy boys coach Bob Nesbitt.

The Eagles of Newcastle outlasted the Huskies of Pittsfield’s Maine Central Institute 3-2 in a marathon match played at the Manson Park courts.

Both teams made up for plenty of lost time as they battled for 31/2 hours. Chris Cochrane’s win in a tiebreaker that extended into eight deuce points capped a 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 comeback win over Lincoln Academy’s Zeke Gonzalez in the dimmed light of dusk.

“Today was just a perfect day for this,” said MCI junior Colin Hubbard. “The gym was not fun at all. We had a couple people who had foot problems just from running on the hard surface in there.”

Hubbard won the other match for the Huskies with a 6-2, 7-6 (6-4) decision over Mitch LaFortune in the third singles match, the first match of the day to conclude.

It wasn’t just the season-opening match for both teams, it was the official start of the preseason and season all in one. The Huskies hadn’t been able to even practice on their courts before Friday, and the Eagles boys have yet to get on their courts yet, although the girls team hosted MCI there Monday.

“I played a little bit in New Jersey last week, but this is our first time outside as a team,” said Eagles sophomore Tristan Durgin, who knocked off MCI’s Dan Gibson 6-1, 6-4 in the first singles match. “At first, I was nervous, but once I got into it, it was just as fun as I remembered.”

“The toughest part was having all of last week off, showing back up for school, and boom, you’ve got a match,” said Nesbitt, now in his second season.

Despite the disappointing loss, eighth-year MCI coach Jon Ramgren was upbeat after the match.

“I think it helps to have the kids just make it through the first one and play outside,” he said. “It also helps, although we lost, to have it end with a win and do it the way Chris did with a big comeback.”

Both teams have two more scheduled matches this week. Like almost every other team in Maine, they will be cramming a lot of matches into the next four weeks as the already-compressed spring season schedule is now caught in a vise due to the delay caused by lingering ice and snow.

“We still had snow up to my knees in some places on three-quarters of these courts last week,” said Ramgren, who shoveled the courts for 31/2 hours last Tuesday to speed the melting process along. “We didn’t even get the nets up until Thursday.”

Monday’s match had a slight United Nations flavor to it as the five matches featured five nationalities: American, Korean, Taiwanese, German, and Chilean.

MCI’s first doubles team featured German exchange student Phil Schiefer and Min-Kuei Chiang from Taipei, Taiwan. The No. 2 team featured native Mainer Marc Turner and Joon Lee of Seoul, Korea. Lincoln Academy contributed to the international flavor with Gonzalez, a student from Chile who moved to Maine last year.