By Nick Stanojevic
Executive Sports Editor
The boys’ tennis team impressively finished in third place at the conference tournament last weekend.  The team placed behind Barrington and Fremd, but managed to beat out rival Rolling Meadows, who was the only team to finish ahead of Prospect in the MSL East this year.
“We did pretty well as a team,” senior Sam Pope said. “We beat Meadows, which made up for losing against them in the regular season and not winning the East.”
“In my four years we won the East ever year except this year,” senior John Kiefer said. “That hurt… we really were not expecting it.” Kiefer agreed that placing ahead of Meadows at conference “made up for it.”
First doubles partners Kiefer and Pope highlighted the conference performance by taking second place. With this performance, the partners clinched a two seed at sectionals, which begins Friday.

In tennis, the head coach for each school decides on two doubles teams to compete at sectionals and two singles players. Coach Rick Huffman called on Pope/Kiefer and seniors John Graven and Dylan Fogarty for doubles. Additionally, juniors Michael Hamman and Matt Wederitch will play in singles.
Unfortunately, the team competes in one of the toughest sectionals in the state. Powerhouses like Stevenson and Fremd compete at the same sectional, taking place in Palatine. Still, Kiefer predicts a third or fourth place finish at sectionals behind Stevenson, Fremd and possibly Hersey.
“You can be better than half the state field and not qualify,” Pope said.
Despite this, Pope/Kiefer expect to qualify for state since they have a two seed and will not need to play any other seeded teams until the semi-finals, and by then the pair would have already qualified for state.
“Hopefully we are going to get a two or three seed [for state],” Pope said. “It would mean everything to me.”