Doubles team finishes eighth

PRATT -- Fort Scott High School's Charlie Sercer and Colton Grillott finished in eighth place at the Class 4A State Tennis Tournament here over the weekend.

Sercer, a senior, and Grillott, a junior, finished the season with 20 wins and 13 losses. Even though they were the only Tigers here, the points the scored in the bracket were enough to make Fort Scott the 10th-place team in final standings.

"You always want a team to peak at the right time of the year and Charlie and Colton have definitely done that," Fort Scott head coach Lynn Barr said. "They have played their best tennis of the season in the last two weeks and had an excellent tournament. Indy's No. 1 team finished fourth and by finishing 8th we finished higher than all of the other SEK doubles teams."

Sercer/Grillott won their first-round match on Friday, defeating Tim Larson and Tucker Brown of Baldwin, 6-1, 6-3.

"We came out playing very well in this match and took control early and were in control for pretty much the entire match," Barr said. "Baldwin made a little rally in the second set, but we were never really challenged. We returned serve and served very well in this match."

In the second round, they were defeated by Jared Altenborg and Seth Nelson of Lindsborg-Smoky Valley, 6-1, 6-0. The Smoky Valley pair went on to defeat Independence's Wes Goodrich and Anthony Davis, 6-3, 6-3 in the semifinal. They defeated Smoky Valley teammates Ryan Reed and Koltin Howard-Talbott, 6-3, 6-1 in the State championship match.

"This was a very strong team and they took control early and dominated from the start," Barr said. "This was one of the better doubles teams that I've seen"

Altenborg and Nelson were State runners-up last season.

Sercer/Grillott beat Stephen Leimbach and Ian Deggendorf of Lenexa St. James, 9-4, in their next match.

"We came out again and took control early in the match," Barr said. "We did a nice job of controlling the net and continued to return serve well in this match. This was a scrappy team that kept playing hard until the end, but we played very good tennis and came away with the win that assured us of advancing to play on Saturday."

With the possibility of rain on Saturday, tournament officials decided to move the next round, which would have been the first round Saturday morning, to the end of Friday night's play. That didn't seem to bother Sercer and Grillott, who dominated Buhler's Ryan Schmidt and Alex Tyler, 9-2.

"This was a very good team, but again, we came out strong at the start, returning serve well, serving well and controlling the net and built a big early lead which Buhler just was unable to recover from," Barr said.

The consolation bracket semifinal was held first on Saturday. A team from Maize South, Avery Emmert and Hunter Tucker, won that match 9-1.

"This team turned the tables on us, " Barr said. "They were the ones that got off to a fast start and took control early and really took us out of our games. They returned serve very well and we were not getting enough first serves in and that gave them the opportunity to take control of the point from the start and put us on the defensive."

Another Maize South duo, Eric Dinkel and Chance Dickinson, won the seventh-place match, 9-4.

"We played better in this match than in the first match of the day, but still just weren't as sharp as we had been on Friday," Barr said. "This team was came in to the net and had good overheads and punished our lobs when we failed to get the ball deep enough. We fell behind early and then started coming back but had just fallen too far behind to come back.

"They were a little disappointed in how the tournament ended up, but they have nothing to feel bad about. If they look at their play over the entire weekend they have to realize what a great tournament they really had. These young men should also be very proud of their efforts and the season they had because they did it the right way, with class and character. Unfortunately we have witnessed a lack of that by some teams we have seen this season, but these young men have represented themselves and our community in a very positive manner."

Smoky Valley won the team title, is second in a row, with 53 points. Hesston was second with 30 points followed by Southeast Kansas League champion Independence with 27.

Iola finished sixth with 16 points. Parsons was ninth with 8 points, just ahead of Fort Scott's 7 points. Chanute finished 11th with 7 points on tie-breakers.

The singles championship match was a battle between undefeated players. Smoky Valley sophomore Quinn Dippel defeated Iola's Kent Toland, 6-0, 6-4 in the match. Dippel was fourth at State last season while his older brother, Chase, finished second.

Max Manley of Coffeyville finished in sixth place after falling to Evan Keller of Wellington, 9-7, in the fifth-place match. Nick Romans of Independence took seventh place with a 9-3 win over Chanute's Matt Stutt. And Max Posch of Independence placed 10th after a 9-2 loss to Hesston's Michael Oyer in the ninth-place match.

In doubles, Goodrich/Davis finished in fourth place after a 6-3, 6-1 loss to Wellington's Gary Fike/Jordon Thompkins in the third-place match. Parker Robertson and John Hurley of Parsons finished 10th after a 9-8 (7-5) loss to Schmidt/Tyler in the ninth-place match.