The Jesuit tennis player lines up at the baseline, inhaling deeply as he prepares for the serve. Suddenly, he tosses the ball up into the air, crushing it past his opponent’s racket, scoring a point.
This was the scene on April 5 and 6 as the Ranger tennis team went out to Fair Oaks Tennis Center, to decide who would go to Regionals out of eight schools from around the Dallas area. In the past two years, the Jesuit Ranger team had advanced all of their top six into Regionals. This year looked like it would be no different as the team looked stronger than ever going into this year’s tournament.
The first two players to go on the court Thursday afternoon were Pierre Craig ’16 and John Lindberg ’18. Craig, who received a bye to move directly onto the next match, won his second round easily, not dropping a single game. Similarly, Lindberg, who did not receive a bye, won his first round match without dropping a game. After the first rounds of singles went on, doubles was next; however, both teams of Campbell Frost ’16 and Hayden Kissee ’17 and Matthew Salazar ’16 and Ethan Kissee ’17 received byes past the first round, because they were the number one and number two seeds in the tournament, respectively, just like Pierre Craig, the one seed, and John Lindberg, the two seed who still had to play a first-round opponent. After waiting around for what seemed like forever, the doubles teams finally got on the court and played their first matches of the day. Not surprisingly, Kissee and Frost won their first match in the second round without dropping a game. Kissee commented on the game exclaiming, “I felt really good playing. Me and Campell have really been connecting well and playing as a team.”
Likewise, Salazar and Kissee won their second round match without dropping a game, even managing to pull off a golden set. Craig also easily made it through his third round match, once again without dropping a game. On the other hand, Lindberg faced a much more difficult opponent, having played him in a past tournament. Thankfully, Lindberg pulled out an impressive win 6-3, 6-2 to make it to the finals on Wednesday. After about another hour wait, the doubles teams went on the court. Both teams easily breezed past their third round matches without dropping a game once more and were poised to take each other on in the finals on Wednesday. Because all six Jesuit players occupied spots in the finals, instead of traveling back to Fair Oaks Tennis Center, everyone played at Hockaday’s tennis courts right down the street from Jesuit. The doubles match, of course, went to the undefeated team of Kissee and Frost 6-3, 6-2. On the court across from doubles, Craig and Lindberg battled it out for the top spot to win first place at districts. In a close match, Craig pulled out the victory over Lindberg 6-4, 6-4. After the matches were finished, the team went back to Fair Oaks to report the scores and receive their medals. However, because of a rule set in the district tournament book, Salazar and Kissee had to play one more match to secure their second place victory. Easily besting the other team and dropping only one game, the number two seeded team placed second and advanced to regionals. After the awards ceremony, Lindberg went on to comment that, “I had a good match against Craig in the finals, and I think that I can do pretty well in Regionals.”
Next week, Jesuit will play in the highly competitive Regionals tournament with teams coming from all over northeast Texas to fight for a chance at state. Last year, Hayden and Campbell managed to make it to the Semi-Finals, barely missing out on their opportunity to go to state. This year both hope to claim first place and move on to a place no Jesuit tennis player has ventured before.
