Boys tennis: Ottumwa earns first dual win
OTTUMWA — The Ottumwa High School boys tennis team spent the first three weeks of the season testing their skills against some of the state's best competition.
Those skills forged in battle against the best are starting to be put on full display.
Logan Storto and Dominick Rath kicked off a successful week by winning the doubles championship at the Pella Invitational, defeating teams from Class 1A state hopefuls Pella and Boone along the way. Rath and Storto were back on the court three days later, scoring dominant sweeps in both singles and doubles play to help the Bulldog boys secure their first dual win of the season with an 8-3 Iowa Alliance Conference south division win over Des Moines East.
"That's kind of what we were looking for," Ottumwa head boys tennis coach Mark Hanson said. "It's been a challenge because we've just got so much inexperience in our line-up right now. After our No. 4 man, we've got a couple of guys that have just picked up a racket for the first time this year. We're making progress. These guys are getting better.
"To start out 0-7 in duals hurts a little bit. This was big for us. We feel like we're playing hard and we're competing. We're not giving up. We're going to finish this thing as strong as we can."
For Rath, the success of the past week has been extremely gratifying. Just two days before winning the doubles title with Storto, Rath was unable to continue a match against Isaac Benscoter and Jacob Christen during Ottumwa's 10-1 dual loss at Marshalltown due to an injury to his midsection
"To come back two days later and take a tournament title felt great," Rath said. "We were able to take the day off before the tournament, stretched out and relaxed. I felt good the next morning. We both knew going into it that we could take it."
Rath and Storto dropped just three of their first 19 games in the tournament, winning 8-1 over Boone teammates Brandon Holm and Strummer Grout as well as 8-2 over Pella teammates Maddox Jones and Trevin Sutton. Rath and Storto put away an 8-5 victory over Boone's top team, Tyler Lindahl and Devin Silbaugh, in the championship match.
"Dominick and Logan have played some of the best competition in the state this spring," Hanson said. "The top flight competition has prepared them well for the tournament season."
Rath continued to roll against Des Moines East, joining Caleb Zeigler in securing straight-set shutout wins in singles play against the Scarlets. Rath and Storto came back together for a 6-0, 6-0 win of their own in the top doubles match against East teammates Julian Camacho and Keegan Beattie-Cerveny.
"I think I only dropped one point in my singles match," Rath said. "I think Logan and I are hitting our stride. You can see it with each match. We just keep playing better and better. I think we're going to find our way to continue to play better as we head towards districts and we're going to play our way to state."
Besides the dominance of Ottumwa's top players, Marcus Storto showcased an ability to never give up in his match with Des Moines East freshman Jaylin Luong. Trailing 6-1 in the decisive tiebreaker of the No. 4 singles match, Storto reeled off five straight points to tie the set and continued to fight back until finally clinching a 12-10 win on his third match point opportunity.
"It was probably my hardest tiebreaker," Marcus Storto said. "When I was down 6-1, I started to walk in and started putting in my shots. I figured out what I needed to do to place the ball inside the lines and not put so much power on them. It really came down to the passing shots. If I didn't do the passing shots and kept hitting the ball right back to (Luong), he was just going to keep hitting it back to me and would have kept pushing me to the back of the court.
"It's a big confidence boost for me. It helps me going into the next meet and will hopefully push me to winning a lot more matches."
Ottumwa nearly brought home the team championship on Saturday in Burlington, finishing with 172 points to place as the runner-up in the Grayhound Invitational. Davenport Assumption edged Ottumwa by just three points for the team title, extending the positive momentum of the Bulldogs heading into the second half of the season.
"We have a really good feeling about how we can perform in these tournaments," Hanson said. "Those tournaments really get us ready to play multiple matches in a single day, which is what we're going to have to do at districts and, hopefully, at state."
Ottumwa (1-7, 1-2 Iowa Alliance) heads back to Burlington for a dual on Friday before hosting Fairfield, Knoxville and Oskaloosa in their home tournament at Dan Staggs Family Courts on Saturday morning starting at 8 a.m.
