Edinburgh athletics director David Walden’s called boys tennis coach Pete Khensouri to his office around 10 a.m. Friday to tell him the Lancers would be playing in the Columbus North Sectional final Friday afternoon.
The Lancers had lost to Hauser 3-2 in Thursday’s semifinals, but the Jets had switched their No. 2 and No. 3 singles players, not knowing it was against the rules at tournament time. Someone contacted the IHSAA, and the state’s governing body Friday morning ruled that Hauser would have to forfiet the No. 2 singles match that it had won, giving Edinburgh a 3-2 victory.
That meant the Lancers would be playing in their first boys tennis sectional final in school history. Their reward: a matchup with undefeated and third-ranked Columbus North.
“It’s kind of like the ‘Lucky Loser’ in pro tournaments,” Edinburgh coach Pete Khensouri said. “We knew coming in playing against the No. 3 team in the state, we knew it was going to be tough.”
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It certainly was. The Bull Dogs dropped only one game in the five matches in picking up a 5-0 victory for their eighth consecutive sectional title.
North (18-0) advances to Regional, where it will play the Bloomington North Sectional winner in the semifinals on Tuesday. The regional final is Wednesday.
“Sectional is done,” North coach Kendal Hammel said. “Now, we need to get ourselves ready for the regional, probably playing Bloomington South the first night. We just have to get ourselves mentally ready for that.”
The Bull Dogs’ Nathan Lin beat Brayden McManaway at No. 1 singles, and Adam Saad blanked Travis Jones at No. 3 singles by 6-0, 6-0 scores. North’s Bhavey Jain topped Max Blandford 6-1, 6-0 at No. 2 singles.
Both doubles matches ended in 6-0, 6-0 scores. Matthew Liu and Joey Zhao beat Parker Neumann and Chase Littlejohn at No. 1 doubles, and Eamon Ma and Will King topped Kolton Reed and Preston Smith at No. 2 doubles.
“We just worked on the things we’re not comfortable with so that we can get better with it,” Zhao said.
Lin agreed.
“Coming into this match, I think both Joey and I knew it would be good practice for regional,” Liu said. “So we just tried to work on some things that we knew we might do when we go into the regional, like working on returns and also just being consistent on out shots.”
The Lancers finished 5-11.
