PUEBLO – Saturday is going to be fun.
As the Class 4A boys tennis state tournament moved through semifinals on Friday, the race for the team championship whittled down to two teams in Kent Denver and Cheyenne Mountain.
Each team was bolstered in its own way with the Red-Tailed Hawks powered by results in No. 3 singles and three doubles positions while Kent Denver is looking to lock up the championship on the strength of Nathan Gold, its standout freshman at No. 1 singles.
Both will have opportunities to add points through the playback brackets, but each player knows that getting the job done for the team is going to be reliant on the combined work of each individual position.
“We just went out and did what we needed to do,” Jackson Miller said. “We all talked earlier today and agreed it’s all about confidence. It’s nice to go out and prove ourselves and prove that we deserve to win.”
Miller and Tyler Blixt beat Colorado Academy’s Alex Hindes and Holden Koch 6-4, 6-4 to advance to the No. 1 doubles final where they’ll meet Kent Dever’s Drew Fenton and Henry Johnson.
In the court just next to Miller and Blixt was the occasional yell coming from Red-Tailed Hawks junior Steven Zhou. He was getting some vengeance against Palmer Ridge’s Ian Capek. It was back on Aug. 31 that Zhou lost to Capek in three sets but this time the results went Zhou’s way with a 6-2, 6-1 win.
“He’s a great player,” Zhou said. “I feel like I kind of choked in that match. He played well and blasted some winners by me but I never should have given those winners to him. He’s a great player, but I had so much drive because he beat me earlier in the year.”
Zhou’s passion and energy will be needed by the Hawks come Saturday’s finals. They trail the Sun Devils by five points and need a solid day to win its second title in the last three years.
He wants to win but he also wants to see his teammates and friends succeed if for no other reason than these moments don’t occur regularly in life.
“I want to bring that energy and that positivity,” he said. “We’re in high school. This isn’t low level, but it’s not pro level. It’s competitive and we don’t have a lot of opportunities to be this competitive.”
As the semifinal matches whittled down, the Hawks took some time to cheer on the Air Academy No. 2 doubles team of Asher Kiser and Luke Brooks. The Kadets were trying to reach the school’s only championship match for the weekend and had to get through Colorado Academy’s George Buyers and Hudson Parks.
Through the cheers of another Colorado Springs area school, Kiser and Brooks split sets before gaining control and getting a 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 win and a spot in a championship match on Saturday morning.
“That’s a great feeling,” Kiser said. “I love it when local teams like Cheyenne Mountain or Coronado cheer us and want us to go far.”
That additional support was necessary after the Kadets took the first set only to lose that momentum after the second. In terms of being pushed to a third set, winning the second can provide a huge boost of momentum and Kiser and Brooks had to keep themselves mentally lifted heading into the deciding set.
“It was really tough heading into that third set,” Brooks said. “I’m really glad we came out on top.”
