Sam Fager wasn’t much interested in seeing his one and only home singles match of the year end in defeat.
But the Iola High senior was trailing 7-4 to Chanute Christian Academy’s Anthony Wendt — one game point away from defeat — while struggling with a brisk wind out of the south.
For the uninitiated, high school tennis matches follow traditional scoring, with the first player to reach eight points the winner, provided he wins by two.
But Fager’s powerful service game started to click, and his adjustments with the wind gusts paid off as he rattled off three straight games to knot the score at 7-7.
That in turn set up the tiebreaker, in which the players alternate serves in a race to seven points.
Back-to-back unforced errors put Fager in a pinch once again, as he fell behind 6-3 — one point away from defeat.
As he did earlier, Fager found his groove in the nick of time. He rattled off four straight points to lead 7-6, but returned a shot long that would have ended the match, extending the playoff 7-7.
What followed was a scintillating back-and-forth competition eliciting visions of Federer-Nadal or Berg-McEnroe.
Fager finally sealed things with an overhead smash and the score tied 10-10, and on match point, Wendt’s return landed out of bounds to seal Fager’s 8-7 (12-10) victory.
“I’d played one tiebreaker before, against a kid from Columbus, and won that one, 7-3, but I’d never had a comeback like that before,” said Fager, who was honored after the match as the Mustangs’ only senior on the tennis team. “I just didn’t want to give up. It was nice to have my family and friends here supporting me.”
“It was awesome,” IHS head coach Chris Belknap said, noting the match lasted more than 75 minutes. “He played for quite a while, and to be able to come back like that was impressive.”
THAT FAGER and his teammates were able to play at all was in doubt Thursday morning, as a round of storms rolled through the Iola area.
With their original home date in late March washed away because of rain, Iola was in danger of not getting to play at the IHS tennis courts at all, had the rains persisted Thursday. A makeup date would have been highly unlikely with Class 4A Regionals next Friday in Chanute.
But the precipitation stopped by midmorning, and athletic director Matt Baumwart used blowers to dry off the courts in plenty of time for the tennis to start on time.
Ethan Riebel, the lone freshman on the Mustang squad, took the court against CCA’s Josiah Stockebrand.
Riebel won the first game before Stockebrand cranked out eight points in a row to earn the 8-1 win.
