The summer is drawing to a close, but the Marshall Junior Tennis Club is hardly finished. The eight-member Marshall team placed third in the U.S. Tennis Association’s Missouri Valley Section 15- to 18-year-old Team Championships at Overland Park, Kan., July 2 to advance to this week’s Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympics in Detroit.
The four boys on the MJTC squad are Myles Yokeley, Hunter Hsu, Jeremy Gilpin and Jesse Murphy. The girls are Nicki Erickson, Krystle Chase and sisters Ariel and Sydne Parkhurst. In the World Team Tennis format being utilized, there is one round each of girls’ and boys’ singles, girls’ and boys’ doubles and mixed doubles.
After beating Columbia at the Missouri District meet, Marshall won two out of three matches at sectional – defeating the Heart of America District team from Kansas City, losing to eventual champion St. Louis in the semifinals and taking the third-place tilt against the Kansas District wild-card entry, Independence.
Marshall’s
is one of 500 clubs involving 21,000 members in the five-state USTA Missouri Valley Section. The MJTC group was led by former Owls and Westminster College standout Ryan Carney, head coach of the new Missouri Valley College program.
Outside of the team competition, Yokeley has been making some noise of his own, winning the Show-Me State Games’ 18-and-under singles division last weekend at Columbia. After disposing of Columbia’s Nathan Lee in the first round, 6-0, 6-1, Yokeley took on two familiar foes – both times claiming two-set victories.
In his third match this year against Helias’ No. 1 player, Matt Schlueter, Yokeley notched a 6-2, 7-6 (7-2) decision in a repeat of the third-place clash in the NCMC Tournament. Yokeley then avenged an earlier loss, to Hickman No. 1 Nate Bohon – to whom he dropped a 13-11 third-set tiebreaker during dual action – with a 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) win.
That set up a gold medal showdown with Helias No. 2 Caleb Stephenson, but the first singles meeting between the two went decisively to Yokeley, 6-2, 6-0.
Yokeley paired with Owls teammate Hunter Hsu – who lost his only singles match – for a bronze medal in doubles. After a 6-1, 6-0 wipeout of an O’Fallon combo, Yokeley and Hsu lost to the Crusaders’ duo Schlueter and Jake Seifert, 6-3, 6-2, before rallying to beat another Helias tandem – Stephenson and Scott Schlueter – 7-6 (7-5), 7-5 in the third-place contest.
The summer isn’t over for the rest of the Marshall club members. Carney is launching the Missouri Valley Junior Open Tennis Tournament on Aug. 5-6 on the MHS courts as a fund-raiser for his fledgling program. The format is the same as that of the Holiday Junior Tennis Tournament, with singles playing on Tuesday and doubles on Wednesday.
The entry fee is $12 for singles and $16 per team for doubles, with checks payable to MVC Tennis. For more information, contact Carney at 886-0182.
Pictured above are (from left) Sydne Parkhurst, Myles Yokeley, Nicki Erickson, Hunter Hsu, Ariel Parkhurst, Jeremy Gilpin, Jesse Murphy and (not pictured) Krystle Chase.
