Columbus North’s Hank Lin hits a shot in a sectional final tennis match against Columbus East’s Erik Takahashi at No. 1 singles at Columbus North High School in Columbus, Ind., Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
The fourth-ranked Columbus North boys tennis team repeated as the sectional champions with a 5-0 victory over crosstown foe Columbus East in the North Sectional on Friday.
The Bull Dogs (21-2) will face Southwestern (Hanover) in the regional semifinals at Bloomington South on Tuesday.
“It feels great. North versus East is a lot of energy,” North sophomore Hank Lin said. “We’re all playing great right now. It’s been a good season for us. Hopefully, we can go far. It feels great to be sectional champions, and we’ll keep climbing.”
North’s Lin against Erik Takahashi at No. 1 singles, Anvay Atram and Amrit Kar against Jacob Detmer and Ethan Bumbalough at No. 1 doubles and Parth Gupta and Parth Shah against Tyler Ernst and Henry Ulrich at No. 2 doubles all won by 6-0, 6-0 scores for the Bull Dogs.
Austin Clark won against Matthew Degner 6-2, 6-1 at No. 2 singles, and Steven Sun defeated Brady Redelman 6-0, 6-1 at No. 3 singles.
“We had the mentality to keep working and doing the things we needed to do and not get sloppy,” North coach Kendal Hammel said. “I’m looking at Bloomington South down the road (in Wednesday’s regional final), so they’re coming. My whole mind is to get everyone on what to do now and not get sloppy and get ready to take care of business down the road at regional.”
East coach Matt Malinsky was proud of how the season went for the Olympians (9-14).
“I will look back fondly on this season,” Malinsky said. “I was really happy with how the guys navigated the ebbs and flows through the season. We stayed really healthy. This is the first year in a while we had a good amount of depth. Everyone did really good work improving over the course of the season.
“Erik has been playing some of the best tennis I’ve seen,” he added. “I’ll miss Matthew and Ethan, our senior. I’ll miss them next year, but we have a lot of juniors coming back next year, so we’re going to make sure we go hard next year. I’ll look back fondly on this season overall with how they competed, and it was a good group of guys.”
