On Saturday, October 17th, the Carmel Men’s Tennis team traveled to North Central to play in the State Team Finals! In the early morning match, the Hounds would defeat a worthy Jasper team with a score of 5-0 to punch in their ticket to the Championship match later that day! The Hounds would meet the North Central Panthers for a nail biting finish!

Carmel took the early lead in the match at 1D as Senior Jones McNamar and Junior Srisanth Malpeddi would defeat Siraj Hamid and Caden Lesnick of North Central with a score of 6-1, 6-0! Soon after at 2D, the Senior duo of Corbin King and Ethan Eckhart would defeat Hudson Himsel and Bennett Schmitt with a score of 6-0, 6-1! The Hounds just needed one more point to win the match!

However, this proved to be rather difficult against the mighty Panthers. At 3 Singles, Marquis Willingham of North Central would defeat the Carmel Sophomore, Jack Jentz, with a score of 6-2, 6-4, to give North Central their first point. At 1 Singles the battle between Junior Broc Fletcher of Carmel and Ajay Mahenthiran of North Central would be close! After a very close back and forth battle, Mahenthiran would defeat Fletcher with a score of 6-4, 7-5.

The match score was now 2-2 as it would all come down to 2 Singles. Eli Mercer of Carmel played Alex Antonopolous of North Central! Mercer took the first set with a score of 6-3, but Antonopolous would battle back and capture the second set with a score of 6-2. The match was tied as both players had one set, as it would all come down to the final third set tiebreaker. Mercer would take the early lead, and after a long fight, he would win the set with a score of 6-3, winning the match for Carmel! The boys would win their fifth consecutive state title in a row! Congratulations to the Carmel Men’s Tennis team for achieving their hard fought five peat!