5A Boys Tennis: Cherry Creek Dominates Doubles, Takes Home Team State Title

DENVER – For the second-straight year, the Cherry Creek Bruins are taking home the 5A Boys Team Tennis State Championship, as the Bruins defeated Regis Jesuit in the championship match 4-1, thanks to wins in 1 doubles, 2 doubles, 3 doubles, and 4 doubles.

Cherry Creek seniors Matthew Hu and Kris Kostadinov, who are less than a week removed from winning the 1 doubles individual state championship for the Bruins, proved to be the heroes of the day, as they won the match that clinched Creek’s victory.

After taking a commanding 3-1 lead in the first four matches, it seemed like a state title could be slipping through Creek’s collective fingers. Regis won the second set in two of the three of the remaining contests, and quickly flipped the momentum of the competition. That’s when Hu and Kostadinov took over their 1 doubles matchup with the Raiders’ Agustin Azcui and Brady Jenkins. They broke Regis’ serve late in the second set, took the lead, and never looked back (4-6, 6-4, 6-3).

“We felt a bit worried [when Regis started winning sets],” Hu said as he celebrated the state title. “I realized I needed to step it up, and once we won that second set, I knew we had it.”

Hu and Kostadinov won their third and final set 6-3, and the Bruins stormed the court as they savored a hard-fought victory. Creek’s top doubles team said this championship was much sweeter than their first.

“This win with the team was, by far, way sweeter,” Hu said. “It was with the team, we had to clinch it out, and we were also down…we had to step it up and it win it, and that’s why it feels so much sweeter.”

Cherry Creek lost the first match of the day, as Regis Jesuit’s Alec Rodriguez-Fields won the 2 singles position in short order (6-1, 6-3) over Jack Loehr, but the Bruins won every completed match after that.

Over a 15-minute span, the Bruins won three matches, starting with 4 doubles, where Cherry Creek’s Wills Possehl and Adam Eikelberner closed out Regis Jesuit’s Tyler Ryan and Bennett Cherveny 6-1, 6-3. Soon after that, Colin Brown and Tyson Hardy closed out Adam Rydel and Kevin Solichien 6-3, 6-2, to give the Bruins the lead. Trey Zurcher and Luke Norford quickly extended that lead to 3-1, by defeating the Raiders’ KC Eckenhausen and Carl Siegel.

The two matches that weren’t completed were 1 singles, between Cherry Creek’s Charlie Stern and Regis Jesuit’s Clay Dickey (7-5, 6-7, 3-3), and 3 singles, between CC’s Trevor Robinson and RJ’s Vlad Sukhovetskyy (6-3, 5-7, 0-2).

Since the dual-style team tournament was implemented last year as the new format for determining the team tennis state champion, Cherry Creek has won both state titles.