‘WE AIN’T NO COUNTRY CLUB’

Parsons wins state tennis title, school’s first in 20 years

WINFIELD — Ending a two-decade drought, the Parsons Vikings won a share of the KSHSAA 4A Boys Tennis State Championships on Saturday, bringing home the school’s first state title since 2005.

“These guys knew it was their time,” Parsons head coach Jane Posch said. “We’ve talked for years about wanting to be on top. We prepared for this by changing our schedule and practicing for having to play on back-to-back days. Everybody did what they needed to do and I’m totally ecstatic with how things went.”

Parsons and Winfield both registered 29 points to share first place. The two tiebreaking criteria — number of medalists and points from medalists — couldn’t break the stalemate, leading to the shared crown.

Buhler finished third with 28 points with Hesston (26) and Independence (21) rounding out the top five.

Saturday’s state title for Parsons came down to the final match of the entire tournament — the doubles championship between Hesston’s Asher Deutschendorf and Braiden Liechty and Winfield’s Jackson Davis and Adam Everett.

Parsons needed Hesston to win the match, which they did in a three-set, tiebreaker thriller, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (2).

“It was a rollercoaster of emotions. That was surreal,” Posch said. “I honestly didn’t think it was going to happen. We knew that doubles match had gone to three sets before at regionals. But then there were just so many ups and downs. When the tiebreaker came, Hesston happened to get up. It was just crazy.”

The entire Parsons contingency, tense and tight watching Hesston and Winfield duel, broke into jubilation when Hesston scored the final point.

“We were checking with multiple sources to make sure our guys didn’t get excited if that wasn’t the case,” Posch said. “I had to check with the scorer’s desk to make sure. Once Hesston won, Mason Morris jumped up and there were hugs all over the place. We didn’t have control of our own destiny.”

All three of Parsons’ entries to the state tournament earned medals.

Wyatt Shultz, the No. 2 seed in singles, finished runner-up for the third straight season.

In the highly anticipated rematch of last year’s state championship, Shultz fell to Buhler’s Davian Spies, 6-2, 6-0.

“Spies has improved a lot this past year,” Posch said. “It was just the pace of play. Wyatt doesn’t face that hardly ever. He’ll have to work on that next year.”

Shultz breezed through the bracket en route to the title match, beat Jaxen DeMott of Fort Scott, 6-0, 6-0, Maverick Peterson of Wellington, 6-0, 6-0, and Luca Marrello of Bishop Miege, 6-3, 6-4.

“He didn’t have any competition on the first day,” Posch said. “We got down to the finals against Spies and knew it would be a tough match. Spies just outmuscled Wyatt on the court. But Wyatt had a fantastic showing. The door is wide open for him next year.”

Conner Barcus and Cole Kennett finished seventh in doubles. After cruising through their first round against El Dorado’s Lane Eck and Theron Mays, 6-0, 6-2, they lost to Buhler’s Von Woleslagel and Reuben Harder, 6-3, 6-3.

On the backside, Barcus and Kennett eventually met Chanute’s Ayden Cummings and Ethan Burnett, where they lost, 9-7.

The Parsons duo then met teammates Mason Morris and Davion Homan in the seventh place match, winning 8-0.

“They were dominating,” Posch said. “They lost a good match to Buhler where they still played well. People were in awe of how good our kids were. They needed to win their matches to win state and they were up for the battle.”

Holman and Morris had a rough first day, losing to Burnett and Cummings in their first match, 7-5, 6-3, before bouncing back with an 8-3 win over Pratt’s Kyler Barker and Hudson Titus and a narrow 8-5 victory over Independence’s Kevin Mah and Heston Smith.

Coming alive to start Day 2, Holman and Morris dominated Independence’s Matthew McLenon and Zachary Scott, 8-2, before falling to Archer and Berger, 8-3.

“I told them that they didn’t have a good day on Friday, but they still won,” Posch said. “They weren’t going to have two bad days in a row. They dominated Independence on Saturday and it was fun to watch them play.”

While Parsons’ state title came down to a tie and the final match of the tournament, the Vikings were not the beneficiaries of good fortune.

Rather, Parsons, which didn’t lose to the Class 4A team in any tournament all season, overcame misfortune to secure the title.

Tanner Nolting, a senior singles player who would’ve likely earned a bye at the state tournament, medically defaulted from regionals before qualifying for state.

“If he would’ve just finished in the middle of the pack, we would’ve had that title locked up on the first day,” Posch said. “We talked about the pressure of this for the last two years and we came up with a plan for how to overcome it. It was a matter of knowing how important matches were on the second day.”

Reflecting on winning the school’s first state title in two decades, Posch remembered a conversation she had several years ago with former Parsons football coach Don Barcus — Conner’s grandfather — who passed away in 2020.

“I remember talking to Don Barcus just a few months before he passed. He came up and talked to me,” Posch said. “He said he didn’t realize until he walked down the halls that this is a tennis school. That was a great compliment for a football coach to recognize the tennis team.”

When the Parsons team van arrived back to the high school campus on Saturday night, a contingency of fans donning signs and whistles christened their arrival in the parking lot.

Tennis is almost exclusively a paywalled sport for the rich and elite. The Vikings brought home a state title in that sport to a district that provides universal free lunch to its students.

“We ain’t no country club,” Posch said. “They have to be dedicated and want to do it. All these guys put time in on their own outside of even what we do in the summer. They lived on the tennis courts. They constantly want to get better and they’re not afraid to work on things. They’re just gung-ho.”