Iola High School’s Bryan Mueller and Colby Works placed fourth in the Class 4A Regional doubles tennis tournament over the weekend. The pair accomplished their goal to qualify for state, which starts on Friday.
“I’m so excited for both of them to go,” coach Joe Turner said. “I think it will be a great experience. I hope they get everything out of it that they can because Bryan graduates and we just hope that they enjoy it.”
The team had two matches on Friday. The fourth-seeded pair took on the 13-seeded team from Chanute High School, Cristian Vilamar and Danny Benavides. They beat them in two sets, winning 6-0 and 6-1.
Iola’s duo then moved on to face the fifth-seeded pair of Alex Reed and Vince Sylvester from Ottawa High School. This match presented more of a challenge, but Works and Mueller took care of business winning in two sets, 6-3 and 6-2.
The win clinched Mueller and Works’ berth to the state tournament, as they were guaranteed to finish in the top six teams, which would qualify for state. Making the state tournament was the pair’s goal for the season.
“I think now we can take on anybody that’s (at state) because we faced really good competition this year,” Works said.
On Saturday, Iola’s duo took on the number one ranked seed in the tournament, Bobby Ho and Ross Benavides from Parsons. Iola would lose in two sets, 6-2 in both. Mueller and Works would get to deuces and not be able to get the point. The pair played better than the score indicated.
“We are so excited about state,” Mueller said. “It would have been good if we could have got these last couple of wins, but that’s OK.”
Since they lost, they played for third place in the tournament against third-seeded Lane Schicke and Pat Hardy from Independence. Iola would lose the nearly two-hour match in three sets, but played one of the best matches of the tournament.
“We did way better than I expected,” Works said. “I expected to make it to state, but we played the best match of the year in the quarterfinals so that was really good.”
Iola lost the first set 6-4. In the second set, the boys were winning 6-5 after trailing for much of the set. In order to win the set they needed to win by two, but Independence tied it 6-6. This resulted in overtime, where the teams played to nine points. After going back and forth, Iola won the set 9-7. Despite winning the second set, Iola lost the third set 6-2, placing fourth.
“They were valiant and gave a strong effort,” Turner said. “The last game was tense but they never let down, the scores don’t really show how hard they played. They were pretty adamant to win but you can’t always get them all I guess.”
Works thought his play this weekend got stronger through each match.
“I thought I served really well the whole weekend, probably the best I’ve served all year,” Works said. “I felt like I got better as we went on because the first match was hard to focus but once the competition got better and the crowd got into it, it was a whole lot easier. I thought we played well at the end.”
Mueller said he didn’t like the way he played, and thought he could have done better.
“I was ok, I made a lot of mistakes and just couldn’t get it over the two front, I was really struggling with it,” Mueller said. “I was really proud of Colby, he stuck with it.”
