Barstow’s Bradley Frye caps perfect season with Missouri Class 1 state tennis title
Add another state tennis championship for the Frye family.
Barstow’s Alena Frye won a pair of doubles titles and a singles championship in the girls state tournament. Her brother, Bradley Frye, got into the act Saturday, capping a perfect season with his fourth victory of the year against Pembroke Hill’s Josh Bortnick, winning 6-0, 6-2 in Class 1 singles at the Missouri boys state tennis tournament in Springfield.
“This is special to me and I am glad to do it for Barstow, a school which has done so much for me,” said Frye, a junior who finished second to teammate Fletcher Scott as a freshman and did not play high school tennis as a sophomore.
The first set and the first game of the match was played outdoors at the Cooper Tennis Complex. A severe storm forced the match to be concluded indoors.
Frye set the tone for the championship match outdoors, winning all seven games while playing near flawless tennis.
“I had not played my best in the semifinals this morning,” said Frye who defeated Rohit Chouhan of Mary Institute-Country Day School 6-4, 6-4. “I pulled out my “C” game in the semis. I knew I would have to play better to beat Josh.”
And he certainly did, especially in the first set.
“That first set is the best he’s ever played,” Barstow coach Tom O’Brien said. “Josh is a fine player, and fortunately Bradley saved his best for the championship match. He is two years older than he was last time he was here and two years stronger. He has every shot and there is so much offense in his game now.”
Any hope for Bortnick that the change to indoors was going to change the momentum of the match was stopped when Frye had aces on the first two points of the first game inside.
“I tried not to let the move to indoors get to me,” Frye said. “I knew I needed to stay strong mentally.”
Frye, who said he intends to play high school tennis as a senior, finished the season with a 23-0 record.
▪ Staley’s Carson Gates entered the Class 2 championship match with a 24-0 record after an impressive 6-2, 6-2 semifinal win over former Class 2 doubles champion Kenji Yanaba of Parkway South.
But for the second year in a row, Gates had to face one of the top ranked players in the nation, Carson Haskins of Parkway South, in the championship match. And the final result was similar as Haskins, who has yet to lose even a set in his three years in high school, won a hard-fought 6-4, 6-3 match in the Class 2 finals.
Haskins entered the championship match with an amazing record of losing just six games in his 18 matches this year. Gates did win more games in the title match than Haskins’ other 17 opponents combined.
The first set Saturday was extremely hard-fought. There were numerous long deuce games and the first set was even at 4-4. Haskins got a break in the ninth game and then held serve in the match which was played entirely indoors.
As he did in the first set, Haskins broke in the first game of the second set. Gates closed to within 4-3 but Haskins held serve, doing so with an ace on the final point. He then broke Gates to assure his third straight state title.
▪ Pembroke Hill’s Nathan Turtledove and Garrett Kincaid advanced to the Class 1 doubles championship match with a 6-1, 6-4 semifinal win over Ethan Chanllongco and Adam Chanllongco of Springfield Catholic.
But Turtledove and Kincaid fell in the championship to Priory’s Victor Djavaherian and Patrick Milburn, 6-4, 6-2. Djavaherian and Milburn had defeated the other Pembroke Hill doubles team of Thomas Thornton and Matthew Gernon in the semifinals.
Pembroke Hill may have lost the two doubles matches to the Priory team Saturday, but the Raiders did defeat Priory Thursday for the Class 1 team championship.
This story was originally published May 27, 2017 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Barstow’s Bradley Frye caps perfect season with Missouri Class 1 state tennis title."