Balciar, Damm each win a match at Regis tennis sectional

WIAA DIV. 2 BOYS TENNIS

Brayden Balciar’s run at a second straight WIAA Division 2 boys tennis sectional title and a spot in this weekend’s state tournament were squashed by a player from La Crosse Aquinas, much like everyone else at Thursday’s sectional meet hosted by Eau Claire Regis.

Balciar, Medford’s flight-four singles champion in 2021, needed two wins in the flight-two bracket Thursday to earn an automatic berth in the state field. But, in his semifinal match, he ran into a tough customer in Aquinas junior Joe O’Flaherty, who swept the match 6-0, 6-3 and went on to win the title with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Lakeland’s Dominic Gironella in the final.

Gironella, who Balciar beat three times during the regular season, knocked off Amery’s Russell Bagley 3-6, 6-2, 10-3 in his semifinal.

Balciar concluded his 16-3 sophomore season with a 6-1, 6-3 straight-set win over Bagley in the third-place match.

Medford head coach Kyle Ranum said it was an unfortunate quirk in the sectional bracketing that caused the top two players from each of the subsectionals to face each other in the semifinal round at the sectional.

“In the first round, Brayden wound up playing a kid who went to state last year as Aquinas’ number-one singles player, but he got replaced by a freshman who is going to state for them this year,” Ranum said. “But give their kid credit. He played amazing. He’s really good. Brayden won the third-place match 6-1, 6-3 and it probably wasn’t really even that close. He looked really good. I just would’ve liked to see the match with Aquinas be for the championship.”

In flight-three singles, Medford junior Saskatoon Damm won his semifinal match 7-5, 6-0 over La Crosse Logan’s Erik Moore, but his bid for a flight championship ended when he had to pull out of the title match with Aquinas sophomore Shane Willenbring with a medical forfeit. Willenbring was ahead 3-1 in the first set.

Damm actually trailed 2-5 in the first set against Moore.

“It looked like he was going to lose the first set, but then he found a spark,” Ranum said. “He started hitting his shots, going for winners and coming to the net. He won the set 7-5, winning five straight games and then took the second set 6-0.”

While the 6-0 second set sounded easy, Ranum said there actually were several long points. On one rally, the team counted 50 hits between Damm and Moore. The match took over two hours and the heat and humidity in the indoor facility took its toll on Damm in the second match and he had to retire.

Damm finished a strong season at 12-4 and should be a candidate to slide into the number-two singles spot next spring.

Aquinas absolutely dominated the sectional week, finishing with 54 points to crush the rest of the field. Altoona, Antigo and Regis all tied for a very distant second with 21 points, while Baldwin-Woodville finished fifth in the standings with 19 points and Amery and La Crosse Logan tied for sixth with 17 points.

Medford was eighth with 15 points, Lakeland and West Salem tied for ninth with 10 and Stevens Point Pacelli was 11th with six points.

Aquinas players won every flight except number-one doubles, where West Salem’s Jack Hehli and Kyle Hehli beat the Aquinas team of Ethan Schamberger and Mitchell Fortney 6-0, 6-1 in the final.

Antigo, however, was the only Great Northern Conference school to secure state representation as number-one singles player Garrett Husnick (18-2) finished second in that flight to Aquinas freshman Anderson Fortney and the Red Robins’ number-one doubles team of Nolan Bunnell and Calvin Jansen (11-9) finished fourth in that bracket.

“Our two guys played pretty well,” Ranum said. “They did what I expected them to. Aquinas is just on another level compared to the rest of us in this area of the state.” The Raiders finished the year 5-8-2 overall in dual meets, including 4-3-1 in the Great Northern Conference, where they finished third and did well with a relatively inexperienced group of 10 varsity players.

“We’ll lose just two seniors, albeit two very good seniors with Quinton Tlusty at number-one singles and Brayden Machon at number-one doubles. Of the eight guys we’ll have back, we have a conference champion (Balciar), a couple of conference runners-up (Damm and the number- two doubles team of Brett Lundy and Conner Klingbeil). We had a good season. I was very happy with how we played, considering it was a year of transition, losing a very good head coach in Jake Bucki. That was tough for some guys. I know I learned a lot this year.”