Center Grove’s No. 1 doubles team of Max Williams, left, and Evan Davis shakes hands with their Floyd Central opponents after defeating them on Friday.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
Playing on its home courts throughout the state tournament thus far, Center Grove boys tennis enjoyed a glide path into Saturday’s state quarterfinal match against No. 15 Floyd Central.
The Highlanders didn’t do anything to slow the Trojans’ momentum.
Seventh-ranked Center Grove faced little resistance during its 5-0 victory, which set up a semifinal date this morning against No. 8 North Central, which gutted out a 3-2 quarterfinal against third-ranked Zionsville.
“That was the best start that I’ve seen out of our kids in two and a half months,” Trojans coach David Beasley said. “Every court was dialed in, super energetic, and they just focused on the court and took care of business.”
Keeping that focus could have been difficult for the Trojans, who haven’t dropped a point all postseason and hadn’t faced another top-30 team since a first-round sectional win over Whiteland.
Beasley says he has made it a point to keep his players sharp during the week.
“We told them that practices have to be really intense,” he said. “We’ve got to treat practices like they’re matches. You’re training against each other in those practices, so it’s sometimes difficult, but a lot of it’s just staying on them, making sure we’re treating every practice as a match.”
Center Grove (18-5) got the three match points it needed to advance in fairly rapid succession. Tyler Lane finished off a 6-0, 6-2 win over Floyd Central’s Benjamin Lammert at first singles right around the same time that the No. 2 doubles tandem of Carson Bush and Dimitrios Kandris was closing out a 6-2, 6-0 victory over Joseph Howell and Nathaniel Hynes. Just seconds later, Daksh Patel clinched the team triumph by dusting Preston Bickel 6-1, 6-0 at third singles.
Patel said that he was “pretty nervous in the beginning,” but it didn’t seem to show in his play. If anything, he seemed to be setting any sort of butterflies free by punctuating the air with a powerful yell after nearly every meaningful point.
“I was pretty loud today,” he said.
Max Williams and Evan Davis then gave the Trojans a 4-0 advantage by defeating the Highlander duo of Braden Poe and Jeremy Mueller at No. 1 doubles, 6-2, 6-3.
All eyes then turned to the only match that provided any semblance of drama, the showdown at second singles between Center Grove’s Loc Pham and Floyd Central’s Riley Doddridge. Pham dropped the first set before storming back and taking the next two easily for a 4-6, 6-1, 6-0 win.
“I hit corner to corner, the angle, and then go to the net and finish the ball,” Pham said of his approach in the last two sets.
Now, Center Grove — making its 10th semifinal appearance but the first since 2011 — heads into today looking to nail down the third state title in program history and the first since 2008. The first obstacle will be a Panther squad that edged the Trojans, 3-2, back on Aug. 26.
Beasley, who notes that his team has made some lineup changes since that first meeting, feels as though the current version of the Trojans are well suited to turn the tables and potentially earn some hardware.
“The kids are super excited,” the coach said. “This is all brand new for all of these kids, and they’re very excited and they’re taking in every moment.”
