Tiger tennis takes part in Spring Hill tourney

SPRING HILL -- Fort Scott High School's tennis team finished third at a four-team round-robin tournament here Tuesday. Host Spring Hill won with 12 points, Baldwin was second with 7, Fort Scott had 5 and Lansing finished with 0.

High winds plagued the tournament, gusting as high as 30 MPH, affecting play greatly.

"Some players adjusted to the conditions better than others, which is a lesson some of our players need to learn," Fort Scott head coach Lynn Barr said.

The No. 1 doubles team of Colton Grillott and Charlie Sercer had the Tigers' highest finish of the day, second place with a 2-1 record. They lost to Nick Gilliland and Shane Hollern of Spring Hill 8-1 but beat Sam Cooper/McKinley Dick of Baldwin 8-1 and Matt Lee/Bradley Watkins of Lansing 8-2.

"Spring Hill was a solid team, but we hurt ourselves by not getting the ball in play and taking advantage of the opportunities that we had," Barr said. "They did come back though in their final two matches and made some adjustments to how they were playing and really stepped it up and took control in both of those matches."

Dustin Willard and Kai Simmons-Mims were third in No. 2 doubles. They lost to Mason Fortney/Zach Weaver of Spring Hill 8-1 and Levi Moore/Tim Larson of Baldwin 8-5 before beating Steven Shoemaker/Alex Lee of Lansing 8-1.

Simmons-Mims is making the transition to doubles after playing mostly singles last season.

"(He) needs to keep in mind that the game has to be played differently than when playing singles," Barr said. "He has the ability, he just needs to fine tune things a little bit and be more aware of what needs to be done differently when playing doubles and not singles. Dustin is playing some of his best tennis and these two have the potential to be a good No. 2 doubles team if they can get a few things ironed out."

Both singles entries finished third. Dillon Peel stepped up to the No. 1 position. He lost to Josh Smith of Spring Hill 8-4 and Chris Schrapel of Baldwin 8-1 before beating Lansing's Adam Detten in a tie-breaker 8-7 (7-2).

Kholton Dwyer played the No. 2 position. He lost to Spring Hill's Luke Mapes 8-5 and Baldwin's Tucker Brown 8-7 (7-2) and beat Lansing's Brandon McNutt 8-2.

"Both played some good tennis with the conditions as they were," Barr noted. "hey both adjusted their games to the conditions pretty well as the afternoon progressed and competed well for us today. Kholton had two close losses that could have gone either way and one of Dillon's losses appeared to be much closer than the 4-8 score would indicate."

The Tigers play this afternoon in Pittsburg High School's invitational on the Pittsburg State University courts. Play is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.