Highland Park’s doubles team of Collier Muenker and Steven Hu are bound for the Class 5A state tennis tournament.
The pair followed a runner-up showing at the District 12-5A Championships with a third-place performance Thursday and Friday at the 5A regional tournament in Melissa to advance to state (May 7-8 in San Antonio).
Muenker and Collier, who were seeded third, defeated Riley Culberston and Kyle Kouba of Dallas Woodrow Wilson in the first round (6-4, 6-3) before cruising in the second round over Michael Mosley and Kasen Johnson of Hallsville (6-1, 6-0).
“They struggled a little bit in the first round, but that’s something you see pretty typically at regionals,” said Vince Sharp, HP head coach. “You see a lot of teams come out and play a little tight to start, but they were able to get through in two sets and then really cruised in the second round. It was some of the best tennis I’ve seen them play all year. It was right about then I started to think they would be in pretty good shape moving forward.”
Tasked with facing the No. 1 seed in the semifinals, the pair came up short Aarohan Sharma and Akshay Kommineni of Frisco Centennial (6-4, 6-2), but rebounded in the third-place match with a convincing win over Corsicana’s Will Higgs and John Higgs (6-4, 6-2).
“It was a little tough drawing Centennial in the semifinals since they were seeded first, but they did a great job coming back against the brothers from Corsicana that won bronze at state last year. They didn’t break our serve one time, which is really massive to hold serve in doubles.”
Sharp believes Muenker and Hu have a good opportunity at returning from state with more hardware.
“They’ll have a good chance out there,” he said. “Collier is starting to finally get fully healthy and we still have a few more weeks until state, so he should be even better. He’s kind of been nursing injuries all year and was really limited at district.”
While Muenker and Hu were able to get past Corsicana’s pair of brothers in the play-back match, HP’s doubles team of Pierce Collard and Prestcott Barnell were unable to do the same in a second-round defeat (6-2, 6-1).
Collard and Barnell were coming off a win in the opening round over Mesquite Poteet’s Jefferson Thaw and Yee Naing (6-0, 6-3).
In mixed doubles, HP’s teams of Austin Chantilis and Marni Peus narrowly missed out on qualifying for state after falling in the third-place match against Reema Reddy and Abhinav Reddy Gadwal of Frisco Independence in a three-set thriller (7-6, 2-6, 6-4).
Chantilis and Peus had previously picked up wins in the first round (6-2, 6-0) and second round (6-2, 6-3) before bowing out against a team from Frisco Lebanon Trail in the semifinals (6-3, 7-6).
William Robertson and Sarah Chandler were also in action for HP, cruising in the opening round over Woodrow Wilson (6-0, 6-0), but were eliminated in the second round by Independence’s team of Reddy and Gadwal (6-4, 6-2).
‘It could have been better, we obviously hoped for everyone to be moving on,” Sharp said. “We weren’t necessarily expecting to move on, though, so it was very pleasing to Marni and Austin come so close and to be so impressive in their first win.”
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