Pittsburg, Indy tie for SEK tennis title

PARSONS — Fort Scott finished in a tie for fifth place at the Southeast Kansas League Tennis Tournament here Thursday as the Tigers and Labette County each scored 2 points.

Pittsburg and Independence tied for the team title with 19 points each. No tie-breakers were used so they are co-champions. Independence won its sixth consecutive team championship, 27th in the past 29 seasons and 47th overall. For Pittsburg, this is its 11th championship and first since 2000, the last year that neither Independence nor Parsons won the tournament.

There were only six teams as Coffeyville chose not to enter due to having a lack of players. So instead of a bracket, each division was divided into pools.

All four Fort Scott entries went 0-2 in pool matches and ended up playing for fifth place. Allen Santana in No. 2 singles and the team of Joe Adams and Elijah Wright in No. 1 doubles won in their fifth-place matches.

“We knew it would be a very tough tournament going in and knew we would have our work cut out for us,” Fort Scott head coach Lynn Barr said. “We were going to have to raise our level of play a little more, play at a more consistent level, and eliminate unforced errors to be able to pull of an upset or two. We had chances, but just fell a little bit short.”

Santana (9-8) lost to Zach Spriggs of Parsons, 8-6, and Julius Maucher of Chanute, 8-2, before beating Dane DeTar of LCHS, 1-6, 6-2, 7-5 in the fifth-place match.

Adams and Wright (10-10) lost to Patrick Sullivan/James Richey of Pittsburg, 8-6, and Fisher Lund/Braden Robinson of Chanute, 8-4. They won the fifth-place match by injury default over LC’s Luke Falkenstein/Jordan Sutton.

Nick Patton (6-10) played No. 1 singles. He lost to Devin McAfee of Pittsburg, 8-1, and to Isaac Stringer of Parsons in a tie-breaker, 8-7 (3). In the fifth-place match, Labette’s Seth Jones prevailed in straight sets, 6-1, 6-4.

Sage Hill and Weston Pellett were the No. 2 doubles team. They lost to David green/Noah Kangas of Pittsburg, 8-1, and Kolby Ussery/A.J. Boling of Chanute, 8-0, in pool play and to Joel Mathes/Zane Sweeten of Labette County, 6-0, 6-0, in the fifth-place match.

Next for the Tigers is the Class 4A Regional Tournament at Independence May 3 and 4.