Jackson wins clash between South powers
Published 8:09 pm Tuesday, October 5, 2010
MILL CREEK — Going into Tuesday’s meet, the Edmonds-Woodway’s boys tennis team had only one blemish on its 4-1 in league, 12-1 overall record from a 6-1 loss to Jackson early in the season.
Now it has two. both at the hands of Jackson, which defeated E-W 4-3 Tuesday to remain undefeated (6-0, 13-0) atop the Wesco South standings.
And it all came down to Jackson’s No.4 singles player, freshman Grant Follis. Follis defeated Louis Phan 7-5, 4-6, 6-2 to give Jackson its decisive point. With the third set tied 2-2, Follis won four consecutive games for the 6-2 set win. He even did it with both teams watching. No pressure, right?
“It came down to that, everyone else finished, everyone was watching it,” Jackson head coach David Hutt said. “He just looked around and everyone was watching him. I asked him ‘did you realize your match won it for us?’ and he said ‘no, that is awesome.’
“It was a strange match. Just a little freshman on the court and it all depends on him.”
The teams split wins in the four singles matches, but Jackson was able to win its No.1 and No.2 doubles matches, something that Hutt acknowledged as a huge turning point in the match.
“I thought it would be a close match, which I expected since we won the first one against Edmonds-Woodway,” Hutt said. “The second time around its always tougher. At one point in the match, E-W was ahead in five of the matches. We just turned it around.”
With two more matches in the division, Jackson needs just one victory to win the conference outright. They can do no worse than tie for first in the dual-meet standings.
At Jackson H.S.
Singles—Mitch Williamson (J) def. Youngha Kim 4-6, 6-4, 6-3; Younghan Kim (E-W) def. Peter Cung 7-5, 6-2; Brandon Bulalac (E-W) def. Bruno Manfredi 6-1, 6-3; Grant Follis (J) def. Louis Phan 7-5, 4-6, 6-2. Doubles—Everet Wang-James Okubo (J) def. Ian Southcote-Want/Dylan Merrill 6-3, 7-6 (7-4); David Hong-Jun Son (J) def. Matt Thornton-Lincon Sea 6-3, 6-2; Jason Major-Drew Corwin (E-W) def. Bill Chan-Joseph Kim 6-4, 6-2. Records—Edmonds-Woodway 4-2 league, 12-2 overall. Jackson 6-0, 13-0.
