St Clair and Balmacewen took 4-2 wins in Dunedin club tennis on Saturday, with both ties coming down to closely fought climaxes.
Taieri beat John McGlashan by default when McGlashan were affected by tertiary camps.
In both ties played, results were in doubt until the final doubles match, but St Clair's win came in a bizarre ending with injuries on both sides.
Mitchell Sizemore and Jeff Elliotte (St Clair) beat Ryan Eggers and Michael Wilson (Eastern Harbour) 7-6 6-7 11-9 in the top double, with Eggers having to complete the match tiebreak serving underarm after suffering a painful shoulder injury in the latter stages.
Earlier Sizemore had spent the last two sets limping after damaging a foot but appeared to be moving more freely by the latter points.
In the singles, played first, he avenged a previous loss to Eggers in a match played in high winds. He looked much more at home in the Edgar Centre, where he was too strong all round, despite some gallant retrieving by Eggers, and won 6-2 6-2.
Elliotte was too consistent for newcomer Sebastian On, a Wellington student, who struggled with a lack of match play and went down 6-1 6-1.
Another Wellingtonian, Michael Wilson, and Leon Jiang won in straight sets for Harbour, leaving the tie poised at two-all after the singles. However, Robin Versteeg and Warren Watson overturned their singles losses and battled to a 6-7 6-2 10-7 bottom doubles win to set up the vital top double which went the full distance and gave St Clair the two rubber margin.
Balmacewen's top order through Paddy Ou and Nelson student Henry Neas dropped only three games in dominating Manawa Rakete-Shea and Thomas Chiang (OBHS) in the singles and Campbell Hodgson added a 6-3 6-1 win over Ayoub Ahmad. Matt McCutcheon, the school team's coach, beat Nick Cutfield 6-3 6-4 to keep them in the hunt.
Ou and Hodgson surprisingly lost to Raketa-Shea and Chiang 10-8 in the third set tiebreak, with the schoolboys showing plenty of enthusiasm, but Neas and Cutfield did enough to squeeze out a 6-4 7-5 win in the bottom doubles to avoid a countback.
