In a homecoming of sorts, Matt Barnett was the pride of the Chattanooga area in the 2017 Pride of Tennessee State Junior Qualifying Championships tennis tournament.
Other local 16- and 18-under players did well also and will move on to sectional competition this weekend in Little Rock, Ark., and Mobile, Ala., but the Hixson resident was the one who won a Tennessee championship. And he did it in the biggest division of the tournament and the last one decided.
The four boys’ and girls’ divisions included 189 participants, and 66 of them were in Boys’ 16.
One day after he and Ryan Toomey finished second as an unseeded pair in 16s doubles, Barnett upheld his No. 1 singles seed with a 6-4, 6-2 championship victory over fourth seed Benjamin Sidwell from Medina on Monday. The match took about five hours at Chattanooga’s Champions Club, but nearly four hours of that was a rain delay with the second set tied at 2.
With local indoor courts unavailable until late afternoon because of camp schedules, tournament director Andrew Rogers and his crew worked around Monday’s rain to finish the Boys’ 16s consolation and finals matches at Champions. The top 16 finishers in each age group qualified for sectionals, and that included everyone playing Monday, so some chose to head for home in other parts of the state before their exact placements could be finalized when play resumed in the afternoon.