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Strand secures state tennis medal

Marshalltown senior survives marathon match to advance to placewinner rounds

By Jake Ryder 5 min read

IOWA CITY -- Jason Strand was out of energy.

Hours into a tournament with temperatures nearing or at 90 degrees and the sun bearing down on the University of Iowa Tennis Complex, the Marshalltown senior had been summarily defeated in the first set of his win-or-go-home consolation match with Iowa City High's Abhay Anil.

Heat cramps. Dehydration.

Whatever Strand lacked physically in that moment, he had to find mentally.

"I realized that this was my last chance," Strand said. "This is what I've been working for, like my whole life. When I'm 40, I'm not going to be able to say that it was fine because I didn't have the energy."

On the brink of elimination, Strand instead picked himself up to win the second set, 6-2, then conquered Anil in the 10-point super tiebreaker, 10-6, to ensure that he will finish with a top-8 medal in placing round matches beginning Wednesday morning to finish out the Class 2A state singles/doubles tournament.

He'll face Fort Dodge's Micah Flaherty in the consolation semifinals. The winner of that match will play for fifth later in the day, the loser for seventh.

Strand follows in the footsteps of his older brother, Kevin, who was in attendance on Tuesday offering his support. Marshalltown head coach James Christensen even joked that Jason has a chance to out-do his big brother, who earned a seventh-place medal in singles last year.

The high temperatures weren't only affecting Strand, and it felt like the match with Anil was going to be a dash to see which one could exploit the others' cramping first.

"I tried to make him run, hit to his backhand and switch up the pace a little bit," Strand said. "And that's probably when he started to do worse."

The crowd gathered at courtside was largely pro-Bobcat, too, which Strand said helped quite a bit.

"They were cheering after every point and giving me the energy that I needed to come back," Strand said.

The morning started with a 6-2, 6-1 win against Bettendorf's Noah Gehler. That paired Strand up with fourth-seeded Anthony Schulte of Cedar Rapids Prairie, a dynamic player who handed Strand his first defeat of the season, 6-2, 6-2.

"He's a fantastic player, very deserving of the 4-seed," Christensen said. "Their coach even remarked to me that he was playing 'apex Schulte,' which makes him a handful for anybody in the state. There'd be times where I'd go out to talk to him after he lost two games or split with him and it's like 'Dude, you did nothing wrong, you hit 14 good shots in a row and he had one more than you did.'"

Schulte's style also played against what's made Strand so successful this season.

"We're so ingrained to pick on a guy's backhand," Christensen said. "And his ability to hit that thing at 90 miles per hour, it's crazy, a weapon unmatched by anybody else."

But now Strand's found his way to the medal stand. And after his doubles teammates of Nile Christensen and Gavin Jablonski; and Isaac Benscoter and Drew Loney were eliminated, tomorrow is bigger than Jason, or even the Strand family.

"It's not just me going into tomorrow," Jason said. "It's about the 'Cats. It's our town. And I'm really excited to represent our team and our town tomorrow."

Nile Christensen and Jablonski finished 1-2 on the day, a match short of the medal round. They knocked off some familiar faces from Ames, Tharun Raju and Anson Bernard, in the first round, 2-6, 6-2, 6-2.

"We started off shaky in that first set but they dug deep and wanted it more," James Christensen said. "That's what you expect from two seniors that are absolute competitors. ... Anytime you've played somebody five, six times in your life, there's not a whole lot of secrets out there, ... but once they got going you could see Ames' expressions change, like they've seen this before."

Speaking of familiar faces, they were then lined up with a Mason City squad, Reed Kruger and Justin Yarahmadi, who had staved off the Bobcats in a tight regular-season match.

This one was controlled by Mason City, 6-2, 6-4, to send the Bobcat top doubles team to the consolation bracket.

"We missed a lot of shots in that match by an inch here or there where we could have swayed the match," James Christensen said. "I know our guys are gonna think about that match a lot, how that could've changed things."

The back of the bracket was no kinder, lined up against a tough Bettendorf crew in Jack Reilly and Robert Matera, who won 6-3, 6-3.

"The reason Nile and Gavin are such a good doubles team is how they complement each other," James Christensen said. "Bettendorf had a good gameplan of making us kind of play left-handed a little bit, and that constrained what we were able to do."

For Benscoter and Loney, it was a chance to play against competition above what they normally see at the No. 3 doubles spot.

They fell to fourth-seed Beck Sissel and Luke Berg of West Des Moines Valley in the first-round in straight sets, then dropped a first-round consolation match with Dowling's Brady Frye and Jimmy Wanek.

"They had a bad taste in their mouth after losing to Dowling [in team substate]," James Christensen said. "They came out here and played well against tough, tough competition, the kind we're going to see at the state team tournament. That's going to be huge in the future."

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