‘Every point was a war.’ Henry Clay’s Evan Duggal finishes strong, wins state tennis title.
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2023 Kentucky high school sports state championships
KHSAA state championships are playing out this weekend and next across four sports in Lexington, and the Herald-Leader’s staff of writers and photographers are covering all the action. Click below for highlights from the baseball, softball, tennis and track and field state championships.
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Evan Duggal has been making steady progress toward a state championship since his sophomore season at Henry Clay High School. When the senior ran into a wall in the person of Whitefield Academy’s Landon Ecarma during the KHSAA Tennis State Championships at Top Seed Tennis Club, he knew what had to be done.
“I felt like I had to leave every single thing I had on the court to be able to take the match the way he was playing,” Duggal said. “The momentum he had in the second set, I couldn’t win a point off a serve.”
Duggal, who reached the state quarterfinals as a sophomore and the state finals last season, took the first set of this year’s boys’ singles title match 6-1 on Thursday.
But Ecarma, just a sophomore and the No. 3 singles seed, turned the tide and took the second set 6-4, sending the all-lefty championship match to a tiebreaker. Last year’s championship match went similarly, but ended with Duggal on the wrong side of St. Xavier’s Eli Stephenson’s comeback.
Duggal, No. 1 state tournament seed, was adamant that this year’s championship tiebreaker would be his. And, in doing so, the University of Louisville signee claimed Henry Clay’s first-ever boys’ state tennis title.
“In the tiebreaker I really had to buckle down,” Duggal said. “And just concentrate on making the rallies as long as possible. Even if he’s in better shape than me, even if I felt like I was gonna die out there, it was the only way I was gonna win that match.”
Did he really feel like he was going to die out there? Maybe so. But he wasn’t worried about it, taking the tiebreaker (10-6).
“My legs,” Duggal said. “I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. I didn’t feel that nervous. I just felt like I had to go out there and do it. But in that breaker, I felt like after every point was a war, and I was just coming back. I had to go fight another war, and again, and again and again.”
Comeback kings
The boys’ doubles title match also featured a comeback victory, when Covington Catholic sophomores Kalei Christensen and Alex Yeager defeated Mr. Tennis and Union College signee Dylan Dethridge and his partner Gary Zheng of Greenwood in a tiebreaker.
Dethridge and Zheng took the first set 6-2, then quickly got out to a 5-1 lead in the second before Christensen and Yeager roared back to take the second set 7-5, as well as the tiebreaker (10-7).
“You couldn’t dream of that,” Christensen said. “I mean, that’s just like a storybook finish. I wasn’t trying to expect anything. I mean, I really thought, down 5-1, I’m like ‘dang, this sucks. Like we’re really about to lose.’ And then just something flipped. Alex got me.”
Christensen and Yeager have played together since second grade. And, after playing together for so long, the pair knows how to pull the best out of each other.
“’Stay with me,’” Yeager told Christensen during the match. “’Making these returns.’ Like, ‘I know you can hang with everybody on this court. Just stay in the moment and keep fighting.’ Because the energy was going up and up and I know he plays a lot better with energy.”
Victory lap
Senior Reagan Mangan and junior Willow Renton of North Oldham know what it feels like to be state champs.
Mangan and Renton claimed their second state girls’ doubles title (the first arriving in 2021) with a dominant 6-1, 6-3 victory over Sacred Heart pairing Gracie Koch and Avery Voss.
Next year, Mangan — who was named Miss Tennis — will play at St. Francis (Pa.), ending the years-long partnership that’s brought so much joy and success.
“We’ve been playing together since I was in seventh grade and she was in eighth grade,” Renton said. “And I’ve loved playing doubles with her. It’s been so much fun.”
It mattered to the duo that they come out on top in their final bow, but they understood they weren’t battling against Koch and Voss alone; the Valkyries’ student section packs quite the punch.
According to Mangan, they’re used to Sacred Heart fans making all the noise during competition. It was necessary, then, for North Oldham to pull out all the stops.
“Normally Sacred Heart out-cheers us,” Mangan said. “So we had to bring everyone we have. Family, friends, everyone to even it out.”
Clearly, it worked.
“Yes, it did!” the pair said, smiling.
Back-to-back singles champ
Ellie Hammond has done it again.
The Sacred Heart junior successfully defended her title as the state girls’ singles champion after a hard-fought 6-4, 6-3 victory over the Covington Latin School’s Sakurako Watanabe.
Hammond was familiar with Watanabe’s skill ahead of the finals, and she expected the matchup to be a difficult one. Hammond said that mental preparation only helped her.
“When she started playing back,” Hammond said. “I wasn’t freaked out, I wasn’t panicked. I knew it’d be a good match. I kind of expected it, I expected something bad to happen. And then after that, I was just like, ‘OK, how can I deal with this? What’s working?’”
Hammond’s victory helped lift Sacred Heart to its fifth consecutive tennis state title, and 14th overall.
“It means more to me this year,” Hammond said. “I think a part of me last year was like, ‘Oh, I won. But did I actually deserve this?’ This year, I’ve had to persevere through so much. It just means so much more to do it again.”
Team standings
Boys — 1. Covington Catholic, t2. Elizabethtown , t2. Greenwood, t2. St. Xavier.
Girls — 1. Sacred Heart, 2. North Oldham, 3. Central Hardin.
This story was originally published June 2, 2023 at 12:33 PM.
