4A boys tennis: Cheyenne Mountain rallies to share team title with Kent Denver

PUEBLO – Back in 1999, Kent Denver and Cheyenne Mountain were in an intense battle for the Class 4A boys tennis state championship.

The Sun Devils won the last match of the day to pull even with Cheyenne Mountain and the two teams ended the day as co-champions. With it being Kent’s first team title, Cheyenne Mountain coach David Adams let Randy Ross and his team take the trophy home with them that day.

After an eerily similar battle that saw the Red-Tailed Hawks win the last match of the day, a No. 3 doubles three-set thriller, Ross was happy to return the favor.

“Dave was kind enough to let us take the trophy,” Ross explained to the crowd gathered at Pueblo City Park. “It’s their turn this time.”

Even though only one trophy was available, both Kent and Cheyenne Mountain are champions, having earned the title through three days of matches and finished the tournament with 57 points each.

The Sun Devils entered the final day with a six-point lead over Cheyenne Mountain and had four positions playing for championships and one playing for third place. Nathan Gold tried to set the tone in No. 1 singles, getting a 6-3, 6-1 win over D’Evelyn’s Aswaanth Karuppasamy to get the Sun Devils their first points on the board for the day.

“I was able to finish my match first and go cheer on the doubles,” Gold said. “We were super enthusiastic through the day and I think that helps.”
 

Arman Kian and Max Gart fell in the third-place match for No. 4 doubles placing much more emphasis on No. 1 and No. 3 doubles where Kent and Cheyenne Mountain were playing head-to-head.

Jackson Miller and Tyler Blixt made quick workd of Drew Fenton and Henry Johnson to give the Red-Tailed Hawks a huge boost.

In No. 2 doubles, Jack Cramer and Mareks Zeile got a huge win by holding off Air Academy’s Asher Kiser and Luke Brooks 6-4, 6-3 to put the Sun Devils at 57 points.

“We realized that we needed our matches to win and others to lose,” Cramer said. “If we won, we’d do what we needed to do for our team so we went in with the mindset of going point by point and staying inside the game, not worrying about what was going around behind us.”

What was going on behind them was having huge implications, however. Niwot’s Alan Wilcox had taken down Cheyenne Mountain’s Steven Zhou in the first set of their No. 3 singles championship match. Zhou rallied to get a comeback win making the doubles matches on the court even more important.
 

Colorado Academy’s Davis Johnson and Charlie Rakowski made a comeback of their own to stun Hank Walsh and Zack Sartain in No. 4 doubles. That loss used up every inch of the minute margin of error that the Hawks had.

No. 3 doubles was now a must-win and the Hawks had dropped the first set. But Connor Kofford and Johnson Peng settled in and forced a split. They took early momentum in that third set by breaking Kent’s serve and cruised the rest of the way to a 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 win to pull the Hawks even with Kent in team points.

“That was all part of our plan,” Peng said. “We knew the serve was breakable. We had done before so we knew we could do it again.”

The elation over winning their match was so high that the full scope of the consequences had yet to hit them even after reporting their score.

“I still don’t know,” Kofford said.

And when reality sunk in, that winning feeling he had experienced just a few minutes prior rushed back through his body.

“Let’s go,” he yelled.

It was the culmination of a furious rally where pretty much everything had to fall the Hawks’ way. And when it all did, Adams couldn’t help but admire the spirit and fight of his players.

“I’m speechless,” he said. “I’m really proud of them. Talk about crunch time and having to do it when you’re down. We didn’t talk about what we had to do to win. We just said take care of your own stuff and we’ll let the chips fall where they may.”

For the Sun Devils, it means the return of a tradition that they haven’t been able to participate in since the fall of 2017. They got to sit down and shave Ross’ mustache. And even if they’re sharing the championship trophy, he won’t settle for half of that facial hair going away. His boys accomplished what they set out to do so it all goes away.

“Even with a tie, we’re still state champions,” he said.

Let the grooming begin.