4A boys tennis: Kent Denver sweeps Cheyenne Mountain in first dual-style team championship
DENVER – After tying for the team championship under the old point system in 2021, the Kent Denver and Cheyenne Mountain boys tennis teams had a score to settle in 2022.
On Tuesday, the two teams met up at Denver City Park for the finals of the new dual-style state tournament to decide the fall’s Class 4A team champion. The head-to-head matchup felt something like year-later tiebreaker contest between the two squads.
Capping off a dominant season, the Kent Denver Sun Devils won 7-0 over the Red-Tailed Hawks.
“It’s awesome,” said Kent Denver senior Mareks Zeile, a three-time individual champion. “It’s very special that we could do it two years in a row and it’s awesome that we could come out today and get a sweep also. It felt good to prove ourselves today as the top team in 4A, at least for right now. I think the whole team was thinking about it (last year’s tie), but not too much. We were just thinking about coming out here and playing the best tennis could, and showing them what we can do.”
Zeile added that he enjoyed the new tournament format because it added excitement to each match. In his match on Tuesday, Zeile and teammate Jack Cramer won 6-0, 6-1 against Cheyenne Mountain’s No. 2 doubles pair of Tyler Blixt and Johnson Peng.
At No. 1 singles, two-time individual champion Nathan Gold, a sophomore, won 6-0, 6-2 over fellow sophomore Andrew Ballenger. Kent Denver’s No. 2 singles player, sophomore Will Moldenhauer, gutted out a lengthy 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Cheyenne Mountain senior Steven Zhou. In the No. 3 singles match, senior Reed Haymons took down senior Zach Sartain, 6-3, 6-4, in a rematch of an individual championship match that went three sets back on Saturday in Pueblo.
At No. 1 doubles, Kent Denver juniors Tyler Hamons and Seb Boada won 6-3, 6-1 over Cheyenne Mountain seniors Matt Peterson and Hank Walsh. Sun Devils juniors Andrew Morgan and Zach Morgan beat junior Cameron Ford and senior Patrick Gibbs, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4. And at No. 4 doubles, Kent Denver senior Marco Fenton and freshman Liam O’Drobinak won 6-4, 6-2 over Cheyenne Mountain junior Jake Schultz and Patrick Barker.
In his first year at the helm, Kent Denver head coach Ian Hintz said Tuesday’s team championship was the perfect was to end the 2022 campaign.
“It was a great season. The boys played great and competed all year long, and it’s nice to finish the season with everybody putting up a W,” Hintz said. “I’m a big fan of the new format. I think that awarding a team championship based on individual lines is not the appropriate was to do it, so I think what CHSAA did this year was the right thing to do.
“They kept fighting all season – every point, all the time. That’s what really made me proud. They just had that desire to be in every point.”
Tuesday’s win was Kent Denver’s 12th boys tennis team title. Cherry Creek was won 44, which is the most all-time.
