VEEDERSBURG — Carson Eberly fell just short of a repeat title in the Wabash River Conference individual boys’ tennis tournament on Monday night. The Fountain Central senior fell to Covington’s Calvin Springer 6-1, 6-2 in the championship match after defeating Covington’s Evan Norton 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 in the semifinals.
Last season Eberly came from behind and defeated Springer to win the title, which was one of four wins for Eberly over the Trojan’s ace in 2019. Fast-forward to 2020 and Springer is 2-0 on the season against Eberly.
“He hit any spot on the court at anytime,” Fountain Central coach Chris Webb said about Springer. “I think he possesses so many different weapons, so many different shots he can hit. He can load the ball up with top-spin, he can drive it deep, he can flatten it out and can cut and slice probably better than any singles player I’ve seen in the conference for a long time.”
The duo could meet for a final time in Eberly’s career on Friday in the sectional final, assuming both teams advance. The Mustangs play Seeger in the semifinal on Thursday at Fountain Central, while the Trojans play Benton Central on Wednesday with the winner to face Attica on Thursday. Webb started to see Eberly find a groove toward the end of the loss to Springer on Monday, and hopes that improvement would continue in a future matchup.
“I feel like at the end of the match, Carson started to dictate points just a little bit more, and that doesn’t necessarily show up in the score line,” Webb said. “but the length of time that those last four or five games took, was probably just as long as the first set was and the first portion of the second set.”
In the doubles semifinals, Fountain Central’s duo of Jacob Keeling and CJ Yager fell to South Vermillion’s Blake Boatman and Caiden Santos 6-7(2), 6-3, 6-2 — before Boatman and Santos fell to Covington’s Myles and Nolan Potter 6-0, 6-2 in the final.
“I think we played at an extremely high level throughout the entire first set,” Webb said about his No. 1 doubles team. “We put together a really good tiebreaker and were in control of a lot of the points. We kept good depth and we were able to get plugged into the net to put some shots away, unfortunately at the start of the second set the script flipped a little bit. I’m very proud of the wa
