Little could stop the Kentridge High boys tennis team or Kentwood High star Max Manthou last week during the South Puget Sound League tournament at Kent-Meridian High.<\/p>\n
The Chargers were slowed by a virus that hit many members of the team Thursday afternoon, though Kentridge still went on to win the tournament with 32 points, just ahead of the 29 points posted by Jefferson and well in front of third-place Puyallup (18).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe barely made it,\u201d said Kentridge coach Bob Armstrong.<\/p>\n
Manthou, however, didn\u2019t barely make it. The Kentwood senior who will play at the University of Washington next year did what he has done since stepping onto the court as a freshman \u2014 he won. Manthou knocked off longtime friendly rival Matt Overland of Kentridge in the finals (6-2, 6-2) in what was a rematch of last year\u2019s state championship.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, Manthou didn\u2019t change a thing about his approach to playing Overland once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cGot to go with what works,\u201d said Manthou, a three-time state champion.<\/p>\n
It was Manthou\u2019s fourth straight league championship.<\/p>\n
While there was little doubt to what Manthou was going to accomplish, the Chargers, though the favorites and North Division champs, left Jefferson an opportunity late into the tournament. The primary reason Kentridge wasn\u2019t able to pull away sooner was because Paul Yi, the team\u2019s standout No. 2 singles player, fell ill on Thursday afternoon and was unable to finish the tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just couldn\u2019t move and had to default,\u201d Armstrong said of Yi\u2019s expected match for third place against Jefferson\u2019s Joe Lee.<\/p>\n
Kentridge\u2019s Vineeth Omkaram, who doubles with teammate Garrett Ballou, also battled flu-like symptoms. Omkaram, however, pulled it together long enough to join Ballou in a 6-4, 7-6 (7) championship win over Puyallup\u2019s Michael and Brian Pinkard.<\/p>\n
The top eight finishers in the singles and doubles portion of the tournament punched tickets to the West Central District tournament, which will be held at Sprinker Recreation Center in May. Kentridge advanced its top singles player (Overland), its No. 2 singles player (Yi), No. 1 doubles team (Omkaram and Ballou) and its No. 2 doubles team (Sahil Diwan and Vincent Lin) to the district tournament.<\/p>\n
Along with Manthou, Kentwood\u2019s No. 1 doubles team of Tucker Siegert and Alex Noyes also will move on to district. Siegert and Noyes nabbed fourth place from the league tournament. Taylor Welch, Kentlake\u2019s No. 1 singles player, took fifth and was the lone Falcon to advance to next spring\u2019s tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Little could stop the Kentridge High boys tennis team or Kentwood High star Max Manthou last week during the South Puget Sound League tournament at Kent-Meridian High. The Chargers were slowed by a virus that hit many members of the team Thursday afternoon, though Kentridge still went on to win the tournament with 32 points, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14329"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}