Boys tennis: Neuqua Valley edges Waubonsie for sectional crown

Call it a white lie or a fib if you want, but the untruth came with the best of intentions.

Neuqua Valley tennis coach Will Rose let singles player Johnny Mou believe his sectional championship match with top-seeded Waubonsie Valley star Aiden Lam had no bearing on the Metea Valley 2A sectional team championship on Saturday afternoon.

But in truth, Mou's outcome would decide whether his Wildcats would claim a third straight sectional title plaque, or if the Warriors would claim top honors.

Rose wanted his junior to focus on himself, to try and win the singles title and earn himself a better seeding for next week's state tournament. Mou, who had lost to Lam in straight sets earlier this spring, outlasted the previously unbeaten Warrior in a drama-filled, 4-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 marathon that allowed the Wildcats to hold off the Warriors 27-24 for the team title. The host Mustangs were third in the team standings at 23, while Plainfield East was fourth (10).

"I did not know that at all. It feels amazing," said Mou, who qualified for a third trip to the state tourney. "Aiden Lam's a really good player. We've battled tight, like 50-50 in the past. It's really an honor to play with him."

The back-and-forth final played on for about three hours, with Lam having a chance to win in two sets while serving at 5-4, but Mou hung tough, winning the second set in a 7-4 tiebreaker and then finishing strong against Lam (21-1), who was plagued by leg cramps in the third set.

Trailing 5-4 in the first set, Mou took a 40-0 lead only to have Lam rally to close out the opening set 6-4. He didn't let that setback carry over into the rest of the match.

"So, the first set yeah sure I was a little shook by it, but I knew the second set if I let that get into my head I'm definitely not going to do well," said Mou (20-9), whose singles title his freshman year had helped the Wildcats pull out the first of their three straight sectional crowns. "If I'm going to lose I'd rather lose with honor. So I just went all out second set, and fortunately I was able to pull it out."

Rose knows his battle-tested junior is always ready for big moments like the one Saturday presented. "As a coach you always have the dilemma, do you want them to be informed or uninformed," he said. "So, I talked to Johnny ahead of time - I knew the math. To be fair, he's played Aiden before and I think Johnny has an internal passion to play that match as well as he could, so I just told him, 'That match is for you. We don't need it. You're not playing for Neuqua, you're playing for Johnny.'

"I lied ... but it was for a good reason. It was true, it was his match to win or lose. It was his match to play and I wanted him to do it. Obviously we benefitted as a team and he helped his team out ... it was him."

Despite the loss in the finals, Lam is headed to his first state meet. A shoulder injury prevented him from qualifying last spring, while the pandemic wiped out the state tennis meet his first two years of high school.

"It makes a difference," Lam said of his cramping and limited mobility at times in the third set on Saturday. "It's matches like these where you realize every point matters. I was serving for the match in the second set, which saves me like an hour and a half of playing [if I win there], but three double faults in a row ... momentum's huge. I feel like once you get rolling, it's not even the fact that I was cramping, just the more balls you put in play, the more comfortable you feel, and Johnny was playing well."

After the long match the two players embraced at the net and who knows, maybe their paths cross again at state. "I'm ready," Lam said of his first trip to state. "Going up North you see the best of the best. You come out and compete ... you've got to play your best tennis when you play the best. At the state tournament everyone plays like him (Mou). Every match is going to look like that. I'm glad I got a match like that ... who knows, we may come out with similar seeds and maybe we'll meet again."

With the top four finishers at sectional advancing to state, Metea Valley's Akshay Baid and Waubonsie Valley's Hector Diaz also will move on in singles. Baid won the third-place match 6-0, 6-1.

In doubles, Kai Sun and Sid Javeri of Neuqua Valley defeated Aadit Gandhi and Jash Kadakia 7-5, 6-2 in the finals, while the third-place match saw Zexin Jiang and Revanth Kothapalli win 7-5, 6-3 as both teams qualified for state.