By Matt Turer — mturer@ky3.com
@MattTurer
Springfield, Mo. — By the time the crowd gathered around what amounted to a center-court match between top seeds Garrett Howard and Jason Nayar, the day had already been decided.
Kickapoo and Springfield Catholic came into Tuesday undefeated in head-to-heads, but the Chiefs flipped a 2-1 deficit after doubles into a 6-3 match win after going 5-1 in singles, clinching things on 2-seed Matthew Zengel’s 8-3 win over Luke Steiner, which put the Chiefs up 5-3.
“As our No. 5 (Thomas Johnston) and No. 6 (Jackson Albeitman) came off with a victory, and then our No. 3 (Garren Shelley) went off with a victory, it was like, yeah, this is coming together,” Kickapoo head coach Eric Wilbur said. “Then I look over and Garrett is controlling the match against [Nayar] and I’m like, I can’t believe this. We’re really going to do this.”
CLICK HERE FOR SPRINGFIELD CATHOLIC VS. KICKAPOO PHOTOS
Wilbur’s post-match surprise followed pre-match uncertainty after Catholic (6-1) mostly handled Kickapoo when the two went head-to-head in the Springfield Invitational singles bracket.
One of those results was an 8-0 Nayar win over Howard in the Invitational semifinals. Howard was a different breed today, knocking off Nayar 8-6.
“I just felt good,” Howard said. “I felt like I was hitting the ball solid. Felt like I was placing it where I wanted to. Just felt like I was hitting the ball right and how I should be.”
Kickapoo (7-0) became the first opponent to even score against Catholic this season as the Irish had won its previous six matches by a combined 54-0.
“It means a lot knowing that they’re undefeated and we took that away from them,” Howard said. “And knowing that they’re our biggest competition going on and that we can beat them will help us not be as stressed when we meet them later on when it means more.”
Howard and Zengel dropped their doubles match to Catholic’s top pairing of Nayar/Steiner, 8-6. But the Chiefs’ top pairing had Nayar and Steiner on the ropes, leading 5-4 before dropping four of the final five games. Both Howard and Zengel used that loss to push them in the singles portion.
“I feel like we shouldn’t have lost that match. I was a bit angry at that so I just wanted to win that next match [against Steiner],” Zengel said.
Zengel built a 5-2 lead on Steiner and battled with that lead on the verge of dropping to 5-4, fighting off Steiner for an 8-3 win.
“I was sort of being able to attack everything he was hitting,” Zengel said. “I was hitting him in and was hitting it away from him so I’d be able to keep closing in and close the points out.”
Cooper Croley’s 8-0 singles win over Bernard Parrish was the only singles win for Catholic.
“Our teams are really pretty evenly matched,” Catholic head coach Justin Fravel said. “At the Invitational it went our way, today it didn’t. Kickapoo is deep, they’re strong. We feel we have a good team as well, but whether it was homecourt advantage or some other factor, we had some tight matches.”
