After playing four hours of grueling tennis on Saturday, Ankeny Centennial’s Will Blevins sat down in a chair and reflected on the end of his glorious high school career.
Blevins didn’t reach his ultimate goal, but he nevertheless walked off the court as a winner–even if the scoreboard showed that he had lost.
Putting up a valiant fight in the finals of the Class 2A state singles tournament in Cedar Rapids, the unseeded Blevins saved nine match points before eventually dropping a 6-4, 6-3 decision to second-seeded Daniel Lu of Dowling Catholic on a sunny day at the Veterans Memorial Tennis Center.
“I really didn’t get tired,” said Blevins, who finished the season with a 17-4 record. “I just kept fighting. I didn’t want it to be my last point.”
While Blevins earned a runner-up finish, the Centennial duo of Caleb Peterson and Nic Mackaman placed sixth in doubles. They dropped a 6-4, 7-6 decision to James Matthews and Caden Rodning of Mason City in the fifth-place match.
“I’m happy with the season,” Peterson said. “I think Nic and I bonded well together. We have a good friendship, so I’m excited with that.”
Blevins became a three-time state placewinner, having finished fifth as a freshman and fourth in 2019. He owns the three highest finishes in school history.
Peterson and Mackaman posted the highest finish ever by a Centennial doubles team. They surpassed the eighth-place finish by Sam Marold and Ryan Lofgren in 2018.
“We had a really great weekend,” said Centennial coach Tami Lewton. “Given the difficulty of the draw for Will, I could not have asked for a better result. He played great all weekend, but just couldn’t pull off the win in the championship. Caleb and Nic had some epic matches and were solid all weekend. I’m super pleased with their sixth-place finish.”
Blevins got off to a good start in the championship match, building a 4-3, 30-15 advantage in the first set. But Lu then won seven of the next eight points to take a 5-4 lead, giving him an opportunity to serve for the set.
After saving a break point, Lu got a fortunate bounce when his shot hit the top of the net and fell in for a winner.
“I couldn’t do anything about that,” Blevins said. “He just got lucky.”
Then, on his second set point, Lu hit a service winner to close out the set.
“I felt at the end of the first set I started going for too much,” Blevins said. “I should have been more patient, and then kind of the same thing happened in the second set until I fought back.”
Lu went on to win seven straight games, taking a 4-0 lead in the second set after twice breaking Blevins’ serve, including once at love. Blevins then hit four big winners to finally hold his serve before Lu held his serve to make it 5-1.
On the opening point of the next game, Blevins hit several great shots to put himself in position for an overhead smash. But his shot sailed out of bounds, and he showed his frustration by flipping his racket.
Blevins regrouped, however, and went on to save five match points in that game, holding his serve and cutting his deficit to 5-2. He then rallied from a 0-40 deficit in the next game, saving three consecutive match points–one of them on a 26-stroke rally–and eventually breaking Lu’s serve to make it 5-3.
The rally ended, though, in the next game. After saving one more match point, Blevins hit a backhand return into the net, allowing Lu to close out the match.
“I’m proud of what I accomplished,” Blevins said.
Lu, a junior, finished with a 20-1 record. The lefthander handed Blevins three of his four losses this season.
“I’m happy for Will and how he played in the semifinals and then saving nine match points,” Peterson said. “That’s not easy, even though he ended up losing. I’m proud of him.”
Earlier on Saturday, Blevins posted a 7-6, 6-3 victory over top-seeded Will Ecklund of Waukee in the semifinals. The two players had split a pair of previous meetings this season.
In a back-and-forth match that featured 12 service breaks, Blevins fought off a set point in the 10th game of the first set and got a break to tie the score at 5-5. After another exchange of service breaks, Blevins then won a tiebreaker, 7-4, when Ecklund’s shot went too deep.
“I knew I couldn’t give him the momentum going into the second set so I did my best to come back,” Blevins said.
In the second set, the Drake recruit won four straight games to take a 5-2 lead.
“I think I just needed to be more aggressive with my game plan and continue with the backhand rallies crosscourt until he gave me a short ball,” Blevins said.
Ecklund got a break to prolong the match, but Blevins then answered with another break to seal the win. Ecklund fought off two match points before back-to-back double faults ended his bid for the title.
Peterson and Mackaman, meanwhile, rallied for a 6-7, 6-4, 10-5 victory over Samir Singh and BJ Wolf of Iowa City West in a consolation semifinal. The Jaguars’ unseeded duo trailed in the second set, 4-0, before winning the next six games to force a decisive tiebreaker.
“I think the key to turning that match around was really all a mental battle after losing the first set in a very close tiebreaker,” Mackaman said. “After going down 0-4 we knew that it was do-or-die so we tried to change things up and get cheered up and we both knew that it was going to have to be one point at a time and not all at once.”
Peterson and Mackaman gained some revenge against Iowa City West. They had lost to West’s other doubles team of Mukundan Kasturirangan and Luca Chackalackal in Friday’s quarterfinals.
“I’m really proud of me and Nic,” Peterson said. “I was kind of like mentally down in that (second) set, and he kind of brought me back up. The comeback was really amazing for us.”
In the fifth-place match, Peterson and Mackaman battled a familiar foe. They had won a three-set match against the Mason City team on May 4.
Matthews and Rodning reversed the outcome this time. Peterson and Mackaman finished with a 12-4 record.
“Mason City played very well the whole tournament and against them we just played mediocre,” Mackaman said. “Part of the problem was I went in expecting the same Mason City we played during the season and instead of playing to win, I was just kind of playing to play. And I think once I started to play to win I played better since we came back from down 2-5 and brought it to a tiebreaker. Also, during the end of the second set, I could feel the fatigue coming in after playing a lot of games the day before and playing that very long match against Iowa City West.”
While Blevins and Mackaman will graduate, Peterson is only a sophomore.
“I’m looking forward to playing singles next year and seeing what I can do,” he said.
