Mandan's Jared Christen wins state singles title in dominant weekend for West
· Yahoo Sports
Oct. 10—GRAND FORKS — On the wall of the Mandan Tennis Center hangs a board displaying the names of local state champions.
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Every day he was there, Mandan senior Jared Christen couldn't help but notice his name was absent.
Christen finished as the runner-up in singles at the state tournament last season. He broke Mandan's record for matches won earlier this year.
On Saturday afternoon at Choice Health and Fitness, Christen finally made sure his name would end up on that wall.
Christen beat Fargo North's Arnav Panwalkar 7-5, 7-6 (3) in a two-set thriller to win the North Dakota boys tennis state individual tournament singles championship.
"That's the first thing I thought: I get my name on that wall," Christen said. "It really hasn't hit me yet. It's something I've been working for my entire life."
Drenched in sweat after the grueling match that lasted roughly two hours, Christen shared a hug with his dad, Mandan head coach Paul Christen.
"It's extra special," Jared said. "I try to keep dad and coach separate, but at the end of the day, I love him so much, and he helps me get where I need to be."
Paul, who anxiously paced the sideline during the match, was impressed by Jared's calm demeanor.
"Absolutely," Paul said when asked if he was the more nervous of the two. "He was solid the whole time. When we were sitting on the chairs before the match, he was just stonewalled. I texted the other coaches, 'I don't know if he's just totally locked in or completely nervous,' and he was locked in."
Jared's singles championship was the second trophy Mandan added to its case this weekend. The
Braves beat Grand Forks Red River 3-2 on Thursday
to win the team dual championship.
"It's been unreal," Paul said of the weekend. "You never dream things are going to happen like this, and all season I thought, 'What if it doesn't?' Because I knew how bad Jared wanted it and I knew how bad the team wanted it. I was like, 'Am I going to have to console kids?' But it's just been unreal. The guys were great all year, Jared's been great all year. You can't script it better."
The West's dominant weekend carried over into doubles. Minot's Nolan Moore and Connor Ressler beat Bismarck Century's Ryan Mullally and Connor Michela 6-2, 6-3 to take home the doubles crown.
"It feels amazing," Ressler said. "Just the pride and joy of all my hard work just coming out in that match. It was awesome."
Moore, a sophomore, and Ressler, a senior, have been practicing together for years.
This season, however, was their first playing doubles together.
"We just clicked," Moore said. "He's got a good serve, we both have good groundstrokes. We both worked well together."
Moore and Ressler beat Grand Forks Central's Henning Gibbs and Charlie Miedema 6-4, 6-0 in the semifinals.
"It's a pretty cool accomplishment for them," Minot head coach Scott DeLorme said. "We go back two months, and neither one of them were thinking about playing doubles together. It kind of hit them halfway through the season — let's give it a try. They've just gotten better and better as the year went on, and they finished it with probably some of their best tennis of the year this weekend."
Gibbs and Miedema beat Grand Forks Red River's Gabe Schauer and Max Mecham, the first-seeded East duo, to secure third place.
This weekend was the first time the West has swept the team, singles and doubles championships in a single year since team duals were introduced in 1963.
"It's been a long time since the West walked away with some of the accomplishments we did this weekend," DeLorme said. "The last couple years, we've seen some young kids coming. We felt like there was a chance for the West to do something. Mandan's an incredible team, Jared Christen's an incredible player. So what they did to win a team title, the first for the West since 1993, is cool for them. But there's a lot of good players in the West, there's a lot of good players in the state, and when you get to this tournament, anything can happen."