Scott City tennis finishes 7th at state, Evans 5th individually

Wichita, Kan. (westernkansasnews.com)–The Scott City Beaver tennis team concluded a good season on Friday and Saturday at the Class 3-2-1A State Tennis Meet held in Wichita at the Riverside Tennis Complex. After taking both singles players and doubles teams to state for the first time in program history, the Beavers did well enough to place seventh as a team.

Kansas City Christian won the state title with 32 points, just edging out Central Plains by one point. Hesston and Sterling tied for third with 29 points.

Scott City was able to push one player into Saturday’s meet. Coming off a tough quarterfinal match on Friday, Joe Evans went 3-0 on Saturday to finish in fifth place in his third state tournament of his career. On Friday, Evans won 6-3, 6-1 over J. J. Heredia of Central Plains, but fell to Sterling’s William Weiner 6-3, 6-3. On Saturday, he faced Drew Starbuck of Colby for the sixth time of the season, and would be victorious over Starbuck for the fourth time 9-5, then took down Kenan Comley of Sterling 9-6, before holding off Hesston’s Logan Gamble 9-7 to win fifth place. Evans was one win away as a freshman in Class 3-2-1A and one win away last year in Class 4A of placing in the top 12.

Also playing singles was sophomore William Cupp. Cupp won his first match of the day on Friday, knocking off Jacob Kautz of Conway Springs on a tiebreaker, before falling to Caleb Kern of Kansas City Christian 6-4, 6-1. He would receive a bye in his first consolation match, but then fell to Luke Bellar of Conway Springs 9-1.

For the doubles teams, the team of Chase Cupp/Porter Irwin won in straight sets over Ben Simmons/Eli Wagner of Kansas City Christian, and would drop their next two matches. The first one on the championship side was to eventual fourth place finishers from Central Plains in Kade Beck/Brett Liebl 6-0, 6-0, and dropped their final match to Michael Maldonado/Thomas Maldonado of Hutchinson Trinity 9-3. The second doubles team of Miles Haire/Christian Wright lost both of their matches, losing the first match to the eventual fifth place team in Charlie Skidmore/Trace Leners of Sacred Heart, and then fell to Ellsworth’s Alex Maxwell/Dalton Zelenka 9-2.

The seventh place finish in the team standings was the highest placing in recent history for Scott City. They placed eighth as a team in 2016.