The Mason High School tennis program added its 28th team state championship by winning the Texas Tennis Coaches Association Class 3A and under state title March 14-15 in Waco.
'We had a great week, came out on top and won the thing,' head coach Cade Smith said. 'Couldn’t ask for any more. The kids had a great weekend and played great.
Overall, we’re very, very pleased with a great tournament.
And when you come out on top, you feel like you accomplished what you set out to accomplish.'
Kelton Jordan and Kalli Criswell were named the Male and Female Tournament Most Valuable Players.
After winning the state title in 2021, Mason had been the state runner-up the last three years. But this season, the team is littered with talented upperclassmen, who have put the time on the court and in preparation to make it very difficult to be outmuscled or worn out by an opponent.
'The goal every year is to win,' Smith said. 'It’s not for know if other people have that goal or not, but that’s the standard that we have here in Mason. And the kids understand that. They have that outlook as well. That’s their goal going into it. And we set that as a team. We’ve been close. We’ve had it on the tip of our racket a couple of times. The kids were antsy to go get them a state championship. I know they wanted it real bad, they put in the work. They sacrificed their Spring Break to go practice and get ready for it. So it’s always good to see them accomplish what they set out to do and put in the hard work and reap the benefits of it. So that was a real cool thing to see, and it just played outstanding. I couldn’t have asked for any more from them.'
And the Punchers and Cowgirls were dominant. Just how dominant?
They beat Vernon, which won the 2023 state title, 10-2 for the championship after stomping Wall, the defending state champion, 10-1. The win against Wall was especially sweet since the Hawks defeated Mason in the final in 2022 10-8.
A day earlier, they crushed Brownfield 18-1 with the only loss in boys singles in a tiebreaker. They beat Iowa Park 13-1 to end the first day. The state tournament had 16 teams. "(The scores) seem lopsided, but in all reality they’re really, really close,' the coach said. 'There was a whole lot of matches in each one of those that are split sets. We won a whole lot of tiebreakers where the kids pulled out close matches. So the score may reflect a 10-1, 10-2 victory, but those were tough dual matches. The score doesn’t indicate really how tough each one of those were. It made those scores look a little more lopsided than the match actually was."
Winds were a constant. Smith called it "rough."
"It blew really hard, made it a difficult day of tennis, and the wind in tennis is always an equalizer," he said. 'You can have a really good team. Somebody else can be scrappy, and that wind can really cause some problems out there. But the kids dealt with that. We played at Baylor University that had a great setup. We got through Friday, got kind of used to the wind. And then Saturday, the wind blew as well, but it wasn’t quite as bad. We’ve been used to the wind. It’s been blowing here quite a bit. So that didn’t seem to bother the kids. The kids have a good outlook on the weather. Whether it’s cold or hot or windy or rainy or whatever it is, they understand that that’s the same on both sides of the court. And they don’t let that bother them. They just went out and took care of business, and that’s what we asked them to do. And they performed great. I mean, they handled all the adversity with the wind and the weather and the heat.'
Smith said his athletes were tested in different ways, from their physical shape to their mental outlook. And he couldn't be prouder of how they responded. "The grind of this tournament is so hard because some of these kids are playing seven, eight matches in two days," he said. "You get worn down, you’re sore and you’re tired. You’ve got to gut it out, and that’s the best part of this tournament. That’s one of the main reasons we play this tournament is because it’s a grind, and the kids handled it well. They played great. I can’t stress that enough. They did everything that they needed to do to win. It was just a good weekend."
