Jackson LenoirArts & Sciences’ Jackson Lenoir will not allow himself for a second to get caught up in the final score of his singles tennis match against Central’s John Mitchell on Monday. However, it’s hard not to gather a little bit of pleasure from how he performed.
Lenoir defeated Mitchell 8-1, and the Patriots went on to a 9-0 victory over the Purple Pounders at Warner Park. The two faced each other three times last year, including the District 6-A/AA and Region 3 championship matches, with Mitchell winning the first and dropping the next two to the Milligan College signee.
Central’s girls improved to 5-3 with a 6-3 win over the Lady Patriots.
The 6-foot-6 Lenoir was consistent in playing shots down the lines, breaking Mitchell’s serve four times in improving to 7-0 for the season.
“I know the final score was 8-1, but it was much tougher than that,” Lenoir said. “I thought I was pretty consistent today, but I know that it’s going to get tougher and tougher when we see each other again.”
Mitchell said that while his game plan was to be consistent throughout the match, Lenoir was an opponent that “you can’t let up against.
“Jackson can strike from anywhere,” he said. “My serves weren’t working that well today. I can look back to when I beat him last year. I’ve got better, but obviously so has he.
“I’d like to chalk it up to a bad day, but Jackson is now the man here. Everything goes through him.”
Ian Derthick, Raymond Kim, Raja Moughrabi, Chandler Custer and Visaal Sivakumar also won in singles for the Patriots.
The girls’ teams split the six singles matches, but the doubles teams of Autumn Baker with Tiffany Murray, Christie Loden with Alex Bonner and Erin Jones with Alex Cotter swept wins for Central. Baker, Bonner and Murray had singles wins, while Cindy Ormaza, Kerstin Johnson and Katie Foster won for Arts & Sciences (3-4, 3-4).
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.