Piper boys’ tennis swept the KSHSAA 5A regional tournament held at Bonner Springs on Saturday, winning the singles, doubles, and team championships.
Supergroup Johnny Vogel and Baird Greenamyre, both individual qualifiers last year as sophomores, won the regional title as a doubles pair this year.
Seeded second in the bracket, the junior duo breezed through the first two rounds without dropping a game. In the semifinal against Topeka West’s Julian Ramcharan and Collin McGee, they kept rolling 6-1, 6-1.
The final was against Lansing senior pair Ike Christopher and Jacob Dennis, who had beaten the Piper team earlier in the year.
Christopher and Dennis were also selected as the United Kansas Conference co-players of the year.
The first set swung back and forth, with service breaks on both side. Lansing broke to go up 3-2, then Piper broke back to 4-3. Up 6-5, Lansing held serve to take the big advantage of a set in hand.
As Vogel later put it, “ I think it was a whole bunch of negativity and just not playing our game at the first set. They were playing extremely well, and I think that changed second set with our mentality and what coach was telling us.”
That energy shifted dramatically when the second set started. Piper reeled off six straight games to take set two and looked unstoppable as they did it, bounding around the court and shouting encouragements to each other between points.
Greenamyre’s service game, which had wobbled in the first set, was now forcing bad returns, and both players came to the net with power.
Before the third set started, Lansing coach Edward Fenton tried to change the vibe, taking a “water break” of several minutes in the corner of the court as Piper’s team chafed to get under way.
It didn’t work. Baird and Greenamyre won set three’s first five games to take a commanding lead.
As Greenamyre described it, “ We were talking each other up, giving each other positivity, and it was just helping throughout the whole entire game.”
Even Lansing holding serve for 5-1 didn’t seem to matter. Greenamyre served out the winning game for the tournament title.
Head coach Bryan Shelley liked how Vogel and Greenamyre responded to their first-set loss.
“They lost the first set, and these guys went on an 11-0 run. It was inspiring, it was impressive,” said Shelley.
“They brought energy. That’s what we try to talk about. If things aren’t going well, you’ve got to bring energy. Their energy turned their play around. So I’m just really proud of them. Really, really proud of them.”
Blake Taylor won the tournament’s singles title for Piper — his path to the top a trail of upsets. Coming into the tournament, the Piper junior held a record of 9-16, and he was seeded eighth.
In the first round, Taylor bested the nine-seed, Basehor-Linwood’s Gannon Suarez, 6-3, 6-2.
Taylor then pulled off an upset of top-seeded Mark Cianciarulo of Topeka West (6-0, 6-3), and he followed it with 6-1, 6-2 win over fifth-seeded Camden Dutton of Seaman.
Taylor took the championship game by default. Lansing’s Emil Schiebel won a grueling three-set match against Taylor’s teammate Chri Htoo and (having already secured his spot at state), didn’t think he could continue on to the final.
Everything I worked for during the season paid off, said Taylor after receiving his first-place medal. “I just fought, [dug] deep every point.”
Taylor has been working on that mental toughness in practice. “ Not letting the tiredness get to me and fighting through every point — using all the energy I’ve got to still hit good shots late.”
Htoo qualified for state by placing fourth in the regional singles bracket. Seeded sixth, he dispatched his opening-round opponent 6-3, 6-2, but his next two rounds were epically long.
Htoo first defeated Deion Cruse of Bonner Springs. Very close in skill and style, points in their match frequently turned into long baseline volleys, each willing the other to make a mistake.
Htoo claimed the first set 7-5, then Cruse the second 6-4. Htoo won the tiebreaker 10-4, advancing in the tournament and guaranteeing a state tourney berth.
His next match, against Lansing’s Emil Schiebel, started with the Piper junior staking out a 6-1 lead in the first set. However, he rolled his ankle and was down on the court for several minutes as a trainer attended to him.
Back on his feet, Htoo won out in the first set, but lost the next two 6-2, 6-4.
Head coach Bryan Shelley described the effect that Htoo’s gutsy play had on the team.
”Chri Htoo — he was an absolute warrior today,” said Shelley. “He was up six-one in the first set. [He] won the first set in the semi-finals, up one-oh in the second set. [He] rolled his ankle but finished it. He had two long, long matches today. I think honestly he inspired us a little bit.”
Bonner Springs did not have a state qualifier this year. Brothers Deion and Dax Cruse earned their way into the consolation bracket with opening round wins, but ended up facing, and falling to, the first and second seeds there because of upsets in the bracket.
Sumner Academy senior Ibrahim Garcia was seeded fourth, but lost 11-9 in a tiebreaker after splitting sets with Dax Cruse. Sabres’ doubles team Daniel Sledd and Emanuel Ling won their opening round match against Topeka West, but lost to Vogel and Greenamyre in the second round.
Falling to the consolation bracket, they were matched with Basehor-Linwood’s senior duo Luke Broxterman and David Barnett, who knocked them from the tournament.
In the team competition (based on points per placement) Piper narrowly took the team win from Seaman 19 points to 16. Lansing finished third with 12 points.
The qualifiers will advance to the KSHSAA 5A state tournament in Salina on May 16 and 17.
