Groth leads Red Demons in solid home performance
By Timothy Everson
A dominant performance by senior Brett Groth led a solid day for Dodge City High School’s tennis team at their home tournament, the Boot Hill Invitational Tournament, on Thursday.
Groth, the Red Demon’s number one singles player, only lost four games throughout the duration of the tournament including an opening round 8-0 win.
“I thought Brett played really well,” head coach Mark Sandbo said. “I thought he played within himself, I thought he played smart, tactical tennis. Brett’s game is bothersome to a lot of Kansas high school players and he’s had a lot of success over the last several years and he’s having a lot of success this year with a 17-2 record.”
Dodge City split themselves into three separate teams in order for more Red Demon players to face a higher level of competition.
“We broke up our entire top six so they could all play number ones in their respective divisions just to see how they compete,” Sandbo said. “My goal was to get all six of
our guys to have top four finishes. We didn’t get that but that’s alright, we saw a lot of things that we can work on.”
Number one doubles team Collin Clark and Rolando Lopez and number two singles player Leo Pawelzik both finished third overall.
Dodge City had two number two doubles teams place in the top five with Jonathan Austin and Thai Nguyen finishing fourth and Cannon Bunkall and Alex Ramirez finishing fifth.
“I’m happy with it,” Sandbo said. “There are some disappointments but if we had placed first across the board I think that there are still some things that a coach will be disappointed in. We want things that we can work on and that’s where our focus will be.”
The Red Demons are closing in on the end of their season but Sandbo feels that the potential of his team has yet to have been reached.
“We want to be playing our best tennis come WAC and regionals,” Sandbo said. “That’s really what we hang our hat on. We’ll measure every week and hopefully, we’ll see the improvement that we want to see from our players.”
Dodge City will hit the courts again on Saturday as they head to Garden City for a tournament. It will be the last tournament for the varsity players before postseason play begins with the WAC tournament in May.
