My weekend started with me writing a preview of tonight’s IU-Ohio State game, covering high school tennis state finals*, then covering a high school football game. Tonight I’m at said IU-Ohio State game, from which I’ll have two stories tonight and another on Monday morning. It’s a rough life …
*And since I’m not finding my tennis story on the Post-Tribune’s site, here it is for posterity’s sake:
By Andy Proffet
Post-Tribune correspondent
CARMEL — After winning his first set at No. 2 doubles, Valparaiso senior Marty Pochop yelled, “Let’s go Valpo!”
The emotion and effort were there. But No. 10 Bloomington South was too formidable to overcome.
The Vikings’ season ended on Day 1 of the state finals, with the Panthers securing the 3-2 victory even while the battle continued at No. 3 singles between Valpo’s Eric Cender and South’s Sam Karcher.
Karcher won the first set in the tiebreaker, but Cender rallied to win the match 6-7 (5-7), 6-1, 6-1.
Pochop cruised to a 6-2, 6-2win at No. 2 over Jake Frederickson.
“Marty had a great match at 2,” Valparaiso coach Tim Shideler said. “Day in, day out, hard worker, great player, great kid to have on your team.”
But Valparaiso was already down 2-0 at that point thanks to straight-set wins at both No. 1 spots.
“We knew going in that they had a great No. 1 player,” Shideler said, referring to two-time individual state champion Ronnie Schneider.
Schneider defeated Ben Kalisch 6-0, 6-0, while Valparaiso’s Jared Folke and Peter Williams also lost 6-0, 6-0.
“I knew they were solid at both doubles. That was going to be the challenge for us, to see if we could get a point there,” Shideler said. “I think both my teams played really well, they just ran across a team that played really well today.”
Pall Baggett and Domonkos Szabo lost 6-2, 6-2, at No. 2 doubles, securing the win for South.
Shideler will lose all three singles players and Szabo to graduation from a team that finished the season 17-3.
“We have a whole lot of underclassmen that are working for that position. I think in the offseason they’ll put that time in and see if we can’t come back and try this next year,” he said.
Bloomington South (17-3) will face defending champion Carmel (19-1) in today’s semifinals.