Blue Valley West seniors Akki Poojari and David Han started their high school tennis careers as the top singles competitors for the Jaguars.

Then each of the next two years, a fresh-faced frosh would join the Jags and push the duo down the team’s line-up.

Poojari and Han could have let that development discourage them as their dreams of winning state titles in singles slowly slipped away.

Instead, the duo refocused their efforts toward winning a doubles title and accomplished just that.

Poojari and Han earned a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Blue Valley seniors Caden Myers and Evan Myers in the Class 6A state finals in doubles.

Blue Valley West won its first team title since being back-to-back champs in 2017 and 2018. The Jaguars scored 42 points to edge out state runner-up Blue Valley North at 36. Shawnee Mission East finished in third with 31 points, ending the Lancers three-year reign atop 6A.

Blue Valley West head coach Alec Bergeron said his players entered Day 2 of the state tournament feeling like the team title was already in their grasp.

“The guys knew they were pretty close to it yesterday,” Bergeron said. “Their mindset was strong going into today. They knew if they came out and played well, we could earn it. They did just that.”

This was the first state championship under Bergeron, who took over the program in 2021, and the fourth team title overall for the Jaguars boys tennis program, winning their first in 2016. Along with Blue Valley, the Jaguars are the only team other than Shawnee Mission East to win a 6A state title since 2012.
 

Poojari and Han become the first doubles champions for Blue Valley West since Bruno Serra and Rata Serra won in 2017 as sophomores. The Serras, who graduated a year early and joined the Wichita State men’s tennis program, split up their doubles team to both play singles as juniors. They ended up battling it out in the state finals, with Bruno winning it all.

Han said it feels really satisfying to accomplish this after having multiple close state matches in previous years not go his way. At state last year, Han and his doubles partner Delvin Ko lost in the quarterfinals despite winning the first set and followed up with a 9-7 loss on the backside of the bracket. They turned things around with two wins to take ninth.

“It’s nice to finally be able to win it all with my team and my boy Akki, who I’ve been playing with the past three years,” Han said.

In both the semifinals and finals this year, Poojari and Han needed to defeat teams that had already given them a loss earlier in the postseason.

Blue Valley Northwest sophomore Luke Pennington and freshman Luca Ospino, who played Poojari and Han in the state semifinals, put the Jaguars duo on the trajectory for just a fifth-place finish in the Eastern Kansas League tournament with a 8-5 win for the Huskies in the state quarterfinals. 

Poojari and Han avenged the loss with a 7-5, 7-5 victory to reach the state finals, setting up another rematch. The Blue Valley brothers tandem won the previous match in the regional semifinals 6-4, 6-7, 6-4. 
 

“By that point, we already knew we won state as a team and that’s what we cared about,” Han said. “We just went into it with nothing to lose.”

Poojari said that allowed them to “play freely” in the final.

“We knew the opponents really well and we had a more set game plan going into that match that we used effectively.”

Both Poojari and Han said they felt like battling with the Myers brothers was a fitting way to finish all of their high school careers.

“I thought it was a really great match from both sides,” Han said. “It was fun playing them all three years.”

Although Poojari and Han’s doubles partnership goes back three years, this was the first time they played doubles together at state.

The Jags senior tandem originally gained chemistry as a doubles team their sophomore year, but both competed as singles in the 2021 postseason.

First, it was Han moving over to doubles when Francisco Landeras joined the team in 2022. This year, freshman Jonah Stolte jumped in the mix, creating a three-player battle for two singles spots.

“We had to do a team rotation, each player played in a tournament to see how they were doing,” Bergeron said. “We looked at results about three or four weeks in and we said, ‘This is what we gotta do. It’s best for the team.’”

Ultimately, Poojari found himself as the odd-man out.
 

Luckily, Poojari took that news in stride.

“Akki was a little upset at first about not getting his opportunity to go for that state title in singles,” Bergeron said. “But then the next day, he’s like, ‘Let’s go get the state title in doubles.’”

According to Poojari, it was not very hard for him to accept the pecking order. He said he always wants to put the team first.

“It all worked out for all of us because we got first as a doubles team and then it ended up with us getting a state championship as a team,” Poojari said.

Poojari said it also helped to see what the two underclassmen were able to do in the singles bracket.

Both Stolte and Landeras reached the state semifinals, with each ultimately losing to the eventual state champion, Blue Valley North senior C.J. Smith.

Landeras, who finished last year as state runner-up, avenged last year’s loss to the 2022 state singles champion, Gregor Wiedeman of Shawnee Mission East, with a 6-2, 6-4 win in the quarterfinals. But Smith got the better of Landeras in the semis, winning 6-3, 6-2.

Stolte defeated Shawnee Mission East senior Graham Faris 7-6 (3), 6-1 to reach the finals before Smith delivered the same 6-3, 6-2 score over Stolte in the final.

“They both gave their best shot against C.J.,” Bergeron said. “They both lost to C.J., who deserved that championship a hundred percent. He played so well.”

Stolte said he thought he played some of his best tennis at state while also echoing his coach’s sentiments about Smith’s performance.

“C.J. deserved it,” Stolte said. “He’s a senior and he played super well. It was his first time playing for a state title actually and he stepped up to the moment. He just played better.”