WICHITA, Kan. – The Sterling boys tennis team took home second place at the 3-2-1A Regional hosted by Wichita Collegiate on Friday. The home team Spartans took the team title with 26 points ahead of Sterling with 14. All of Collegiate’s athletes took home the first and second place medals in both singles and doubles. However, Sterling had four athletes that are headed to state, while Devin Boice of Haven and Trinity Catholic’s doubles team of Sam Pennycuff and Vincent Wuertz also qualified for state.
In singles, Jace Darnauer of Sterling finished in third place. He won his first match 6-0, 6-0 over Brady Engelland of Nickerson before a 6-0, 6-0 win over Cooper Brown from Classical School in the quarterfinals. After a 6-1, 6-3 loss to G Farha from Collegiate in the semis, he bounced back with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Devin Boice of Haven in the 3rd Place match. Boice beat Brady Childs from Trinity Academy 6-0, 6-0 in his first match and then won 3-6, 6-4, 10-8 over Lathem Kizzar of Sterling in the quarters. A 6-0, 6-0 loss to Amir Khicha of Collegiate set up his match and ultimate loss to Darnauer. Kizzar of Sterling beat Cooper Cheng of Independent 6-1, 6-1 in his first match before the loss in the quarters to Boice. He was able to recover on the consolation side with a 6-0, 6-1 win over Dominic Mitnaul of Classical School and won the 5th Place match over Brown of Classical School 6-2, 6-2.
In the doubles bracket, the top area finishers were Trace DeShon and Ben Bierstedt of Sterling in third place. They shutout Dagan Schneider and Thaddeus Preville of Nickerson 6-0, 6-0 in their first match and then won 6-1, 6-1 over Nathaniel Olsen and Zachariah Sebits of Trinity Academy in the quarters. After a 6–2, 6-4 loss to James Nolan and Vihaan Ganganala of Collegiate in the semis, they bounced back with a 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 win over Blaine Farley and Owen Holdeman of Trinity Academy in the 3rd Place match. Also qualify for the 3-2-1A State Tournament in doubles were Pennycuff and Wuertz from Trinity Catholic. They opened with a 6-1, 6-2 win over Binh Nguyen and Nathan Page of Independent before falling 6-0, 6-2 to Farley and Holdeman over Trinity Academy in the quarters. In the consolation, they eliminated Hayden Dobson and James McGlynn of Sterling with a 7-5, 6-4 win before falling 6-3, 6-4 to Micah Mitnaul and Jacob Chan of Classical School to finish in sixth place.
All of the area competitors that qualified for the 3-2-1A State Tournament will now head to Prairie Village and the Harmon Park Tennis Complex this coming Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16.
