ANDOVER – Evidence that a new day was dawning in Class 5A boys tennis sat courtside Saturday afternoon at the Andover District Tennis Complex.
 
Among those watching the state doubles championship were brothers Ian and Miles Cusick, Topeka West graduates who completed their careers last May as two-time 5A champions.
 
They were flanked by a group of supporters cheering for Arkansas City’s Oakley and Dawson O’Donnell, another brotherly pair the Cusicks defeated in their last high school match. Rivals on the court and friends off it, the Cusicks were interested to see if the O’Donnells could win their first state title and complete an undefeated final season together, or if Andover Central seniors Isaac Huber and Trevor Sagehorn could crack the O’Donnells’ code.

 
Turns out 5A doubles is still a family affair.
 
The O’Donnells simply wouldn’t be denied this spring, wrapping up a 39-0 season with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Huber and Sagehorn. Five of the Andover Central veterans’ losses in their 31-9 campaign came to the O’Donnells, including the Ark Valley-Chisholm Trail Division II and regional tournament finals.
 
“Three years in the works and a lot of hours,” said Dawson O’Donnell, a junior whose older sibling graduated with his Ark City classmates after the tournament Saturday evening. “Oakley and I were just super consistent.”
 
A three-year journey also produced the first 5A singles title for Blue Valley Southwest junior Sanjay Rajkumar. With St. Thomas Aquinas standout Russell Lokko – winner of the previous three state championships – off to play collegiately at Louisville, Rajkumar claimed the vacated seat with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over top-seeded Evan Goates of Maize South in Saturday’s final.

 
Rajkumar put the finishing touch on his championship ahead of the O’Donnells, who waited for Huber and Sagehorn to battle through a three-set semifinal with Andover’s Isaac Homan and Lad Oborny.
 
The final four in Saturday’s doubles bracket all came from the Ark City regional, which the O’Donnells won on May 3. The top-seeded Bulldogs cruised past surprise semifinalists Trey Lacy and John Korfhage of Kapaun Mt. Carmel 6-1, 6-1 in their morning match.
 
Meanwhile, Huber and Sagehorn were just getting started.
 
Playing their crosstown counterparts Homan and Oborny for the fifth time this season, the Jaguars dropped the first three games and eventually the first set. But they rallied for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory in a 2½ -hour marathon, winning the final three games to defeat the Andover duo for the fourth consecutive meeting.
 
“It was important that we solved them,” Huber said. “We wanted, of course, to win the Andover rivalry in the semifinals. It was important, but more so for that team title. The goal was to keep it going.”
 
The O’Donnells, who didn’t drop a set all season, made that a rugged task. Sagehorn held serve to start the final, but the Bulldogs broke Huber in the third game and carried the momentum through a swift opening set.
 
“There were a few times when they just hit good balls,” Huber said. “It’s just draining whenever you feel like you have a good point and they hit that crazy shot. They do it a lot.”
 
The Jaguars fought back, taking a 2-0 lead in the second set with Huber scoring the break point on an overhead smash. But the O’Donnells countered with a service break, then took their first lead of the set at 3-2 on a double fault.
 
“You’ve just got to stay calm,” Dawson O’Donnell said. “You can’t let losing a couple games get to you. They can get hot, too. When they’re hot, you’ve just got to wait until they start missing and keep raising your game.”
 
“Calm” wasn’t the operative word on match point, which ended with Oakley O’Donnell rifling a forehand that Sagehorn tried to answer with a backhand volley that sailed long. The O’Donnells then dropped their rackets and the typically more demonstrative Dawson held true to form, spiking his hat to the court before jumping into Oakley’s arms.
 
“It was still tough to get here and we knew we had to play a clean, efficient match if we wanted to win today,” said Oakley O’Donnell, who finished his career as a four-time state placer in doubles, first with Chris Arnett when Dawson was an eighth grader. “It means a lot because this is the end of my tennis career.”
 
The O’Donnells, who launched their partnership in 2022 with a fourth-place finish at state before an emotional championship loss to the Cusicks last year on their home courts, notched their 100^th victory together in Friday’s quarterfinals against Valley Center’s Nico Azcorra and Gabe Shaffer. An unbeaten third season as partners left their record at 102-8.
 
“There was the pressure of not winning one yet and of course going undefeated for so long,  there was that added pressure,” said Ark City coach Aaron O’Donnell, Oakley and Dawson’s father. “They were just confident and in control.
 
“I was a wreck this morning,” he added. “It was just all the emotions. Oakley is not going to go on and play beyond this, so for him to go out with this best possible outcome, that’s all I could ask for.”
 

 BLUE VALLEY SOUTHWEST’S RAJKUMAR FINISHES IN STYLE
 
This was what Sanjay Rajkumar had in mind.
 
The Blue Valley Southwest junior made his third state appearance his best yet, surrendering just 14 games in his four-match championship run. On Saturday, he defeated St. James Academy junior Eli Donaldson 6-2, 6-1 in the semifinals before taking down the No. 1-seeded Goates.
 
“I think the goal was to just always win state,” said Rajkumar, who finished 27-3. “I definitely had it in me and I knew I could do it.”
 
Rajkumar knew a state title would be a tall order last year with Aquinas’ Russell Lokko working on a third consecutive unbeaten season. But after finishing fifth in 5A singles in 2022, Rajkumar wasn’t enamored with another consolation bracket run after he lost to Maize’s Sam Ritchie in the quarterfinals.

 
“I really just did not want to be there,” said Rajkumar, who also lost to Kapaun Mt. Carmel’s Jack Judkins on the back side of the bracket and finished ninth. “I didn’t want to place fifth again. It really affected my mental game.”
 
Rajkumar spent his offseason devoted to improving his tennis and avoiding that feeling again. The payoff came Saturday, when he started strong against Goates and never let him gain the upper hand.
 
“I was pretty shaky both of the first parts of each set,” said Goates, who finished 33-3. “I got a little better, but he just started out really fast and was really good.”
 
Bolstered by strong competition – his three losses were to Class 3-2-1A champion Caleb Bartels and Class 6A top-three finishers Luke Pennington of Blue Valley Northwest and Blue Valley West’s Jonah Stolte – Rajkumar certainly had the look of a confident player. A three-point sequence midway through the first set highlighted that.
 
Rajkumar ripped a powerful forehand for a winner, then followed it up with perfect touch on a drop shot that landed softly just over the net. He added a volley into a corner Goates had just vacated for another point and a 4-0 lead.
 
“That game really showed what my game’s all about,” Rajkumar said. “I felt like at that point I was playing my best tennis.”
 
The left-handed Goates, who hadn’t lost since falling to Bartels in the Wichita Collegiate Tournament of Champions final in mid-April, finally started to settle in. But Rajkumar broke Goates’ serve for a 5-2 and closed out the first set 6-3, then won the first three games of the second set.
 
Rajkumar replicated the opening-set score by serving out the final game at love. He sealed the victory with an ace on match point.
 
“After last year, I was kind of disappointed in how I did,” Rajkumar said. “I put in a lot of hard work in the summer and just made sure I was ready.”
 

 ST. JAMES TAKES TEAM TITLE BY ONE POINT
 
Every victory counts in the state tennis tournament.
 
But St. James Academy coach Amy Fangman quickly recalled two wins that helped the Thunder edge co-runners-up Andover Central and Blue Valley Southwest for their first team championship.
 
St. James’ freshmen doubles team of Luke Niesen and Alec King didn’t place in the tournament. But after falling to Kapaun’s Trey Lacy and John Korfhage in their opening match Friday, Niesen and King came back from a 7-4 deficit to edge Valley Center’s Luke Hoy and Jackson Lewis 9-8 (7-1) before bowing out of the tournament.

On Saturday, the Thunder’s No. 1 doubles team of Peter Wirtz and Jonathan Brazil erased a similar deficit, rallying past Bishop Carroll’s Jackson Rosa and Gabriel Weber 9-8 (8-6) to finish fifth.
 
Those victories contributed to St. James’ team score of 29 points. Andover Central and Blue Valley Southwest each finished with 28.
 
“Without those, we would have been in third place,” Fangman said.
 
Instead, Thunder players donned dark blue bucket hats and posed for pictures with the championship trophy.
 
“Our goal is to always get six kids to state and then all just medal,” Fangman said. “We don’t talk about places. We just try to get to the medal round. The one team didn’t make it, but they are two freshmen, so they’re going to be here for a long time.”
 
St. James’ lineup had just two seniors – Wirtz, who entered the tournament with Brazil as a regional champion, and singles player Cullen Knipp, who finished eighth and played in the match that completed the two-day competition.
 
 
Like their younger teammates, Wirtz and Brazil also fell to the 12^th-seeded Kapaun duo, quickly sending them into the consolation bracket. They worked their way through it with five victories, none tougher than their finale.
 
“It was pretty special,” Wirtz said. “It took a lot of grit from me and Jonathan to just keep hanging in there point after point and sticking with it. Bishop Carroll was a great team, but I’m really glad we were able to pull through.”
 
Junior Eli Donaldson, who also captured a De Soto regional title in singles, posted the Thunder’s highest finish, taking fourth. On Saturday, he lost to eventual champion Sanjay Rajkumar in the semifinals, then fell to Carroll freshman Rock Steven 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the third-place match.
 
Donaldson experienced leg cramps under the warm afternoon sun. He resumed play after a delay late in the match, but Steven closed out the victory.
 
The team title was welcome news for Donaldson, who finished with a 24-10 record.
 
“I had no idea we were getting first,” Donaldson said. “When I heard that, it was insane.”
 
Andover Central’s second-place finish was fueled by the doubles runner-up team of Isaac Huber and Trevor Sagehorn. Junior Jaxon Post placed sixth in singles and the Jaguars’ freshmen duo of Henry Walker and Elias Kachelmeier took 10^th.
 
Blue Valley Southwest matched its finish – and point total – from the 2023 state tournament in sharing second with Central. In addition to Rajkumar’s singles title, senior Emmett Wirth topped Knipp in the seventh-place match, and the Timberwolves’ doubles entry of Saket Jagannath and Vidhu Reddy finished 11^th.