By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Covington Catholic entered the 9th Region boys tennis tournament with the top two seeds in the doubles bracket. The talented teammates faced off in the championship match on Thursday and the winner was decided in a second-set tiebreaker.
CovCath senior Kalei Christensen and sophomore Blake Hussey got past their sophomore teammates Will Tribble and Jacob Kramer, 6-2, 7-6 (7-5), to take the doubles title on their home courts.
“They played us really good,” Christensen said after the match. “We knew they weren’t going to go down without a fight, that’s for sure.”
Christensen won region and state doubles titles the last two years with Alex Yeager as his partner.
Yeager switched to singles this season and won a third region title on his own with a victory over Villa Madonna junior Shayaan Ahmad in the other final on Thursday.
Yeager took the first set, 6-0, and had a 4-1 lead in the second set when Ahmad withdrew from the match.
“I play gritty and grind games out, and I guess it got to him,” Yeager said. “I had a little nerves at the beginning, but found it and started rolling.”
This is the fifth consecutive year that CovCath has swept the region singles and doubles titles. The Colonels’ string of doubles champions dates all the way back to 2007, but they never had a state champion duo until 2023 and 2004.
Christensen and Hussey will enter this year’s state tournament undefeated. They won their first three region matches without losing a game before Tribble and Kramer took them to a tiebreaker in the championship final.
“I feel like me and Kalei just realized there was no more messing around,” Hussey said of the tiebreaker. “Let’s get serious and play consistent, and we just got it done.”
Yeager’s victory added to his family’s high school tennis legacy. His father, Jason, was a three-time region singles champion and won state titles in 1989 and 1990 when he was a student at Dixie Heights.
The younger Yeager expects to be among the top three seeds in the singles bracket for the boys state tournament to be played May 27-29 in Lexington. The last time CovCath had a state singles champion was 2013.
“It’s pretty cool that I got to follow in his legacy,” Yeager said of his father, who is also his coach and training partner. But there’s no added pressure on him to win a state title like his dad did.
“Not at all, I’ll just go out and play hard and try to win it all,” said Yeager, who will join the NCAA Division I tennis team at Drake University in Iowa next school year.
There’s a good chance Christensen and Hussey will be among the top seeded doubles teams in the state tournament, even though one of them hasn’t played in the bracket before.
“I feel like personally I can deal with the pressure and obviously Kalei can, winning back-to-back state championships,” Hussey said. “So I feel like our chemistry will be good together.”
Pandas remain unbeaten against in-state teams
Notre Dame’s lacrosse team advanced to the quarterfinals of the girls state tournament with a 15-4 win over South Oldham on Thursday at Notre Dame.
The Pandas (16-1) have not lost to an in-state opponent this season. They will visit Oldham County (14-3) at 7 p.m. Friday with the winner moving on to the final flour in the inaugural state sanctioned playoffs.
Oldham County knocked off Cooper, 19-7, in another girls quarterfinal match on Thursday. One of the matches in the boys lacrosse quarterfinals on Friday is South Oldham (15-5) at Dixie Heights (13-6) at 5 p.m.