Kings of the Court: Four freshman have made East’s varsity tennis team and their competitive training has prepared them to succeed in high school tournaments

As unpredictable 20 mile-per-hour winds blew through the Harmon Park tennis courts, freshmen Aiden Bush, Christian Clough, Brody Feldman and Christopher Long — the only freshman to make varsity tennis — continued hitting even after the designated two-hour practice.

The four of them have been playing against each other since age 12 as members of Kansas City United Tennis at Overland Park Racquet Club. They decided to join East tennis to learn how to compete as a team, according to Feldman.

“We’re all pretty intense and we want to win,” Feldman said. “So we’ll do whatever it takes. That’s what happens when you’re playing with your close buddies every single day outside of high school and we’re playing matches and drilling together. You even get sick of each other and you want to beat them so badly.”

Practicing upwards of six hours a day, five days a week during the summer offseason and participating in two hours daily clinics during the school year, the KCUT program has prepared the freshmen by having them play against collegiate-level players, teaching them to compete in high school tournaments without losing their cool.

“I always tried to be confident when I played and believe I could win,” Clough said. “I always try to keep that kind of mentality and just have little goals and then if I reach it, I go for the next thing over and over again. These matches are just this big hill you have to climb, and you just have to take little steps trying to get your confidence.”

The quartet of players didn’t participate in traditional tryouts for East’s tennis team earlier this year, playing their final tournament in Arkansas before the East season began. This was because KSHSAA rules state that the players could not participate in KCUT practices or USTA tournaments during the high school tennis season.

The boys were immediately plugged into varsity practices after their OPRC Coach Elliot McDermed emailed East Tennis Coach Andrew Gibbs, boasting about their skills. Gibbs knew about the program’s success since his 5-time-state-winning girls team had players that trained in KCUT, according to Bush.

Transitioning from the individual realm of the KCUT program and United States Tennis Association tournaments against nationally ranked players this year, varsity tennis has been a new experience for the freshmen who are now playing in a more casual and relaxed team environment.

“When you’re playing [USTA] tournaments, you’re only focusing on your results,” Clough said. “You try to win your matches so you can get a higher [ranking] than everyone else’s, while for high school, it’s like trying to win your matches, but for the whole team.”

Watching seniors on the team play for the first time when practices started in March showed the freshmen the importance of experience and seniority. The seniors know exactly what the other is thinking and move in sync throughout the whole match, according to Clough.

“They just know how to play as a team with someone else better [than us] because they’ve played multiple years together,” Clough said.

Due to their lack of doubles chemistry compared to the seniors who have been playing together for longer, Long, Clough and Feldman find themselves primarily competing in singles matches. This has resulted in some healthy competition as they compete against each other in practice.

“We all know exactly how the others play, which is very annoying,” Feldman said. “So what we’ll do to each other is we’ll completely torture each other’s weakness until they can figure it out.”

Despite playing together for the thousandth time, they still enjoy these rivalries because of their competitiveness and ambition to improve. The matches have helped them fix each other’s mistakes and develop their individual playing styles.

“When we practice together, it’s fun because we like each other,” Bush said. “But once we start playing [matches] against each other, it’s kind of a love-hate relationship.”

Varsity captain and senior Gregor Wiedeman is impressed with this year’s team and believes the freshmen will help the team compete at state in May.

“You just get a better-qualified guy,” Wiedeman said. “The [high school] competition has kind of declined, [with kids] just going out and playing for your high school team every season, or going to country club tennis [to practice] in the offseason. It’s completely different from [the freshmen] going to an academy and drilling and making sure you get physio and getting the right coaching.”

Immediately seeing the difference from past players in the freshmen’s mentality, Wiedeman believes their mental fortitude will benefit the team in big games against better schools.

This level of competition has prepared the team to be competitive for the next four years, and Feldman believes all the freshmen on varsity have the potential to improve even more as they push each other to their limits in some overly competence practice matches.

“We know what’s going on in each other’s heads pretty much so it kind of sucks at the same time, because they know everything we’re about to do and they can exploit your weakness in a second but you can also exploit theirs,” Feldman said. “It’s a big battle and with guys knowing that stuff, you can always improve your own game.”