Fountain Central and Southmont will both look to defend sectional titles in boys’ tennis this week.
At Crawfordsville, the Mounties will battle Parke Heritage in the semifinal on Wednesday night.
The Wolves are a team Southmont beat 4-1 last week, admist a current 11-match win streak after starting the season 1-6.
“There’s a lot to the kids, when you get beat up too much at once, sometimes you have to be very leery that they’re going to forget how to win,” Poynter said after the win over Parke Heritage last Monday. “So to come back and to win nine (now 11) matches in a row. That’s very big for the whole team mentally, especially the way we started off.”
Crawfordsville and North Montgomery face off in the other semifinal. The Athenians beat the Chargers 4-1 during the regular season, and are playing some of their best tennis of the season entering the sectional.
“I think the biggest factor in playing our best tennis has been teamwork,” Crawfordsville coach Craig Brainard said. “For our best chance this week, I think we definitely need to forget about our opponents and play the ball every point. We can’t psych ourselves out.”
At Fountain Central, the Mustangs earned the bye and will play Seeger on Thursday night in the semifinal, a Patriots team they beat 5-0 during the regular season. If they win, they will likely play Covington, who plays Benton Central on Wednesday, with the winner to play Attica in the semifinal on Thursday. Fountain Central beat Covington 4-1 during the regular season.
A sectional title for the Mustangs would be a fourth-straight.
“They’ve been here before,” Fountain Central coach Chris Webb said. “They are no stranger to this. The sectional is something they look forward to, they talk about. It drives us during conditioning, it pushes us when we are doing sprints. We always talk about making sure we are in better shape than the person on the other side of the net. Something they definitely have on their mind all season long.”
