4A Boys Tennis: Twin Brothers Clinch Second Consecutive Team Tennis State Title For Kent Denver

DENVER – The final round of the 4A Boys Team Tennis State Championships was completed and Kent Denver earned their second consecutive title Tuesday at Denver Tennis Park.

Kent Denver secured the 4-0 sweep of bitter rival Colorado Academy on the backs of twin brothers Andrew Morgan and Zach Morgan, who clinched the championship with their narrow victory over the Mustangs’ Luca Siringo and Jackson Turner (4-6, 6-3, 6-3), less than a week after they won the 4A 2 doubles individual state championship together.

“This feels incredible,” Andrew Morgan said after the win. “We’re both twin brothers, we’re both seniors, and it was awesome to get it done in Pueblo and also get it done here. It just feels great. [After] everything this team has given me, to give them that championship point and see all my team so excited, it was unreal.”

The comeback victory was only made sweeter by the long and winding road the Morgans were forced to take in order to reach the mountain top.

“Sophomore year, I missed the entire season. I broke a bone in my back,” Andrew said. “Junior year, we lost at Pueblo [in the individual tournament], in the semifinals, and you just couldn’t ask for a better finish than playing with your twin brother, winning Pueblo, and hitting the winner to secure the state championship against our rivals. It’s just all we could ask for.”

That adversity carried over into their championship-clinching match. The Morgan’s reached match point six times before finally winning the contest on their seventh attempt.

“I was very nervous, but you have to give it to the Colorado Academy kids, because they played out of their minds to keep their team alive,” Zach Morgan said.

Kent Denver’s first win of the day came on the 2 singles court, where their own Max Gart quickly dispatched Colorado Academy’s Jackson Wells (6-1, 6-2). Soon after, Gart was joined by fellow Sun Devils Liam O’Drobinak and Noah Bogel, who defeated the Mustangs’ Craig Stapleton and Thomas Rollhaus in straight sets (6-3, 6-4). Then, Kent Denver’s Seb Boada put them in position to clinch the championship, after sweeping Colorado Academy’s Jackson Gilliland (6-4, 6-4).

Three matches weren’t completed, as a result of CHSAA’s new ‘play to clinch’ format, where all play stops the moment a championship is clinched. Those matches were the 1 singles match between Kent Denver’s Will Moldenhauer and Colorado Academy’s Charlie May (3-6, 6-6), the 1 doubles match between Kent Denver’s pairing of Jack Cramer and Tyler Haymons and Colorado Academy’s pairing of Michael McKee and Clayton Johnson (4-6, 6-4, 0-2), and the 3 doubles match between Colton Maass and Simon Hirsch, of Kent Denver, and Charlie Rakowski and Oliver Neely, of Colorado Academy (7-6, 5-7, 0-0).

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