Heading into his first high school tennis meet, Emporia High freshman Chris Reimer had a fairly straightforward plan — keep it simple.
Perhaps he should use that approach all the time.
Simple worked better than Reimer expected in his first action at the high school level, as he finished in third place at the No. 1 singles spot in the Emporia High Invitational on Tuesday.
“I didn’t try to go for too much,” Reimer said, “I just tried to hit it back and let them make mistakes.”
Reimer began his day with a hard-fought 8-6 victory over Ottawa’s Robbie Proctor in which Reimer turned a 6-5 deficit into the win by breaking Proctor’s serve in two of the final three games of the match.
Reimer’s showdown against his next opponent, Lawrence’s John McGrew, turned out to be one of the more tantalizing matches of the day, as the two battled for 15 games in a display of contrasting styles. The taller McGrew relied on a powerful serve and attack at the net, while the shorter Reimer tried to work the back corners of the court with volleys.
Reimer took an early 1-0 lead, but McGrew held serve twice and broke Reimer twice to take a commanding 4-1 lead, which he eventually pushed to 7-4. That’s when Reimer mounted his comeback, returning McGrew’s earlier run by holding two serves and breaking twice to tie the match at 7, sending it to a tiebreaker.
McGrew jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the tiebreaker before Reimer closed it to 5-3. But Reimer double faulted on a serve, which gave McGrew a 6-3 lead, and an errant shot by Reimer that sailed long gave McGrew the 7-3 tiebreaker for the 8-7 victory.
“It’s human to get tight,” EHS coach Matt Irby said, “and he (Reimer) got a little tight there in the tiebreaker.”
However, Reimer suffered no ill effects after the match with McGrew, easily dispatching of Topeka High’s William Marshall, 8-3, in his final match of the day to claim third place.
“I was pretty pleased with my day,” he said. “I was glad I got in the third-place match. I thought I’d do worse, but I ended up getting third place, so it’s pretty exciting.”
While Reimer was impressive in his first action at EHS, it was sophomore Jonathan Roman who had the most productive day for the Spartans by taking first at the No. 2 singles spot.
After winning close matches against opponents from Ottawa and Lawrence, Roman settled into a groove in the serve-and-volley game in the first-place match against Topeka High’s Elliott Buck to take an 8-3 victory.
“In the last match, I just played how I needed to play,” Roman said, “I got my serves in and my volleys over.”
Roman jumped out to a 3-1 lead over Buck thanks to an aggressive approach at the net that seemed to befuddle Buck. While Roman said he considered his net game “kind of shaky,” he looked anything but early in the match, consistently charging the net after his returns for easy points.
“I think that was a big difference in helping me win that last match — having good net play,” Roman said.
Roman seemed to put the match away when he broke Buck’s serve after a lengthy battle to take a 5-3 lead, as Roman closed out the match with ease afterward.
“I was really impressed with him,” Irby said. “His last kid he faced was a good little player. He (Roman) probably played the best out of anybody today.”
In doubles action, the No. 1 singles duo of Sergio Segura and Mark DeDonder finished fourth, while the No. 2 pair of Adam Coburn and David Nasrazadani came in second after falling in the first-place match to Andover Central, 8-1.
Emporia and Topeka High each finished with 19 team points, but Emporia was awarded first place because of Reimer and Roman’s head-to-head victories over Topeka High opponents.
Irby said he was pleased with how well his team performed in its first showing of the season.
“They actually played a little more prepared than I thought they would be,” he said. “There are a lot of things to work on still. There are still a lot of things that make you scratch your head, but overall, I was pleased.”