SCHSL Boys Tennis state championships

SCHSL Boys Tennis State Championship Recap 

By WORTHY EVANS

Contributing Writer

Columbia - Thunderstorms throughout the Columbia area Saturday threatened to soak the South Carolina High School League boys tennis state championships, but once the venue moved from the Cayce Tennis Center to the University of South Carolina’s indoor tennis facility off Rosewood Avenue, three out of four championships fell into place.

Myrtle Beach claimed the 5A Division 2 championship, A.C. Flora won the 4A crown, and Oceanside Collegiate won the 3A state title as the matches played out over the afternoon on the 6-court facility.

The fourth, the 5A Division 1 matchup between upper state champion J.L. Mann and lower state champion Wando, was postponed and rescheduled for Thursday at noon at the USC indoor tennis facility.

While under cover, USC’s facility is small compared to the Cayce Tennis Center’s 23-court spread, which would have had eight teams battle out four championships over the course of about four hours.

5A Division 2

Myrtle Beach downs upstate rival Riverside

Regardless of classification in which they compete, the Myrtle Beach and Riverside tennis teams have been getting meeting in the state finals for several years. The Pirates won the 4A state title in 2023 with a win over the Warriors. The next year Riverside returned the favor and claimed the 4A crown.

This spring both teams moved up a classification and found themselves in the 5A Division 2 bracket. And on Saturday through the rain and location change, Myrtle Beach claimed its second state championship in three years with a 5-1 defeat of the Warriors.

“Riverside’s a great team,” Myrtle Beach head coach Jeremy Howe said, noting Riverside head coach Heather Gage. “They had a great strong team last year, and this year they were bringing back two returners, same as us. We have a good crew, but man, I respect that coach all day, and what they’re doing up there.”

In singles, No.1 Spencer Green defeated Nathan Purica 2-6, 6-4 (10-0); No.2 Ashiv Patel defeated Hadden Otay 6-1, 6-1; No.4 Foster Cahill defeated Jaehun Kwak 6-4, 6-4, and No.5 Wyatt Anderson defeated Eric Zhou 6-0, 6-4 for Myrtle Beach.

The doubles team of Gage Van Wagner and Kenneth Gunter defeated Thomas Belflower and Cooper Pauls 7-5, 7-5 to clinch the win.

The only match that fell Riverside’s way was when Myrtle Beach No.3 player Caleb Cahill retired from his match with Spencer Thicke because of cramps. That happened after the Pirates clinched the championship.

Gage, whose team won their first state championship in 20 years last year, said her young team is poised to do better in the future.

“I’m really proud of my guys today,” Gage said. “It might be the same school and the same program, but I lost five starters from my program last year, and these guys who came in this year fought tooth and nail for every single point. They loved to go on the court and they played with character and class. I can’t ask for anything more.”

Having an upstate rivalry to aim for will help her young team, Gage said.

“It’s fun to have somebody to aspire to, we talk about it all season long,” Gage said. “Now these guys have the experience this year, they’ve been in this environment and they can come back next year knowing what to expect, and that pressure, it’s going to be so much easier to handle.”

Howe, whose team has won three state championships in his four years with the team, thinks another

“I can see them coming back again and again,” he said of the Warriors. “I hope that we’ll be back again and make it (to the state championship match) five years in a row.”

4A

AC Flora tops Bishop England for 4A title

This year’s A.C. Flora boys team picked up where the school’s 2021 state championship team left off. Despite the stoppage of play in the middle of the first sets in singles at the Cayce Tennis Center, and resumption of play in the USC indoor tennis facility, the 2025 Falcons kept their cool and took out Bishop England 5-1 to claim the team’s third state championship.

“I don’t know how it works but each one gets sweeter and sweeter,” head coach Amy Martin, who won four state championships, three with the boys and one with the girls, said. “This was the middle school team from 2022, we grew them up from 2021 and they have come out and gotten exactly what they needed to get done this year.”

Bishop England No.1 player Dante Naud defeated James Smyth 6-1, 6-4, but the Falcons notched a victory in every other match. No.2 Jude Smyth defeated Roland Wier 2-6, 6-1 (10-3), No.4 Vijay Sinha defeated Colin Murphy 6-1,6-2; No. 4 Will Hewitt defeated Parker Murphy 6-2, 6-4; and No.5 Wiliam Beasley defeated Lucas Kizzetto 6-2, 6-4.

In doubles, the No.2 team of Will Trumpeter and Tripp Van Vlake defeated Andrew Hamilton and Caleb Watson 6-1, 6-0.

The doubles match was the first win on the board for the Falcons, and once that victory was notched, the hassle of weather and moving from venue to venue disappeared.

“We had to keep it rolling. We were a couple of games up, but that means nothing,” Martin said. “We came to a new surface, a new place where fans weren’t allowed to walk around, but we had to keep the same momentum we’ve had for the past three months.”

The Falcons (21-1) had carried the momentum of a formidable team, but going into the final match Martin said she felt the pressure of finishing the season on a high note. She added that the team didn’t know much about the Bishops coming into Saturday’s match, and that helped, rather than hurt.

“We knew nothing about Bishop England and that was probably to our advantage that we had no knowledge of them,” she said. “Because we overthink and sometimes it’s better to not know anything about your opponent sometimes.

BE boys (14-2) coach Kristin Arnold knows that her team put in a lot of good work over the season, and with losses to two state champions, Flora and 3A champion Oceanside Collegiate, the Bishops record is a good one.

“We had a great season, I’m very proud of the boys,” Arnold said. “The boys team hasn’t been to the state final since 2019 and they’ve worked incredibly hard to be in this position to be back here. They worked hard and competed and I’m very proud of them, it just wasn’t their day.” 

3A

Oceanside Collegiate wins fifth straight state championship

The venue change didn’t bother Oceanside Collegiate at all. The 2024 2A state champion Landsharks took out Clinton 6-0 to win the 2025 3A championship, the boys team’s fifth straight state title.

“We’re very lucky that our team is able to compete in different classes, 1A, 2A, 3A, we’ve been all over the map,” Head coach Alex Lazano said. “I’m just very lucky to have such good players that will allow us to succeed at any level.”

Among those players is Coach Lazano’s son, No.1 player Alex Lazano, who defeated Nathan Meade.

“Proud dad moment, he’s going to go play for The Citadel,” Lazano said. “He’s won four straight high school championships. A lot of boys underneath him have won two or three state championships, and all the boys are working hard and competing. We’ve seen them from freshman all the way through graduation.”

Behind Lazano’s son were No.2 Luke Skillman, who defeated Edwin Orr; No.3 William Claus, who defeated Matthew King; No.4 Oliver Pfarr, who defeated Jacob King; and No.5 Huck Reynolds, who defeated Cooper Stinson.

The No.2 doubles team of Carter Heath and Helms Sandel rounded out the victory by defeating Jake Meyerholz and Malakye Brewer.

The success of the Landsharks’ tennis program–the girls team has won three state championships–moves the team forward, Lazano said.

“It’s a tradition,” he said. We’ve had I think four or five more others who have moved on and are playing college tennis right now. That’s a big draw for those guys to see that and fill in the spaces.”

For Clinton, a 2A school that competed among 3A teams all year, just reaching the final match of the year is a testament to the players’ hard work, Red Devils head coach Clovis Simmons said. 

“We were put in with 3A this year and that was kind of a shock, but I used it and told the guys that we’ll just have to be the 2A team that makes it the longest distance and hopefully win the 3A bracket,” Simmons said. “We fell short but at least we were here.”