Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – There is a lot of thought that goes into pairing up a doubles tandem.

Longtime West High coach Mitch Gross has a long list of factors that he considers when looking at the best combination for a doubles team.

Over the years Gross has had success assembling strong doubles squads.

West High has had a doubles team in the state championship match four of the last five seasons and has won three titles during that span.

“I look at strengths and weakness, who goes together, matchups, personality traits and I ask guys at the beginning of the year confidentially who they want to play with and that weighs into my decision,” Gross said. “For the most part we have been pretty successful at finding the right pairs.”  

West High has a pair of teams that will attempt to build on its recent run of doubles success when the Class 2A state tournament gets underway on Friday at Veterans Memorial Tennis Center in Cedar Rapids.

The West High squad of senior David DiLeo and freshman Eli Young is 18-0 this season after winning the district championship and joins the duo of Jack Wenzel and Mukundan Kasturirangan in the 16-team state tournament field.

“We never are going to make guarantees of how we are going to finish at the state tournament,” Gross said. “We are going to give 100 percent effort and lots of times if you have some talent and a lot of effort and a little bit of luck you end up pretty happy at state tournaments.”

Sometimes finding the right doubles team is difficult other times there is a pairing that seems obvious.

That was the case for Gross with Wenzel and Kasturirangan.

Just a junior Wenzel is already among the most accomplished doubles players in the state.

Wenzel has played in the last two state doubles championship matches, finishing runner-up in 2016 and winning the fifth state doubles crown in West High history last year with departed senior Cole Schneider.

Pairing the experience of Wenzel and the youth of Kasturirangan seemed like natural move to Gross.

“There is some strategy that goes into putting teams together and that’s one of the reason that I put Jack with the freshman just because its hard being a freshman going to the state tournament and Jack has done everything at state and can be a great role model for younger guys,” Gross said. “Jack is in a good position to lead his partner.”

Matching Wenzel and Kasturirangan has turned out the way Gross had hoped.

The duo has posted a 16-2 record with one of those losses coming to DiLeo and Young in three sets in the district final match.

“I think we complement each other well,” Kasturirangan said. “We both have different strengths and that’s why I think coach put us together.”

After being the underclassmen on a successful doubles team the past two seasons Wenzel is using his experience to his advantage this season.

He has spent the year attempting to prepare Kasturirangan for the rigors of the two-day state tournament.

“This year I tried taking more of a leadership role this year,” Wenzel said. “Mukundan is a freshman, he is a great player but I’ve tried to take more of a leadership role this year as an upperclassmen. Having the experience in the pressure situations in the state tournament definitely helps and I try to pass that on to him.”

Wenzel and Kasturirangan hadn’t played together before this season but they were hardly strangers.

Both play at the Hawkeye Tennis and Recreation Center so they had a knowledge of each other’s game.

That previous knowledge helped them form quickly as a doubles team.

“Mukundan and I are in the same academy so we knew each other’s games,” Wenzel said. “Just playing practice matches with each other in practice we have gotten to know each other pretty well.”

After five consecutive wins to open the season the duo suffered its first loss to the Linn-Mar duo of Luke VanDonslear and Zach Glanz 6-3, 6-3.

Wenzel and Kasturirangan then rattled off 11 consecutive victories before their loss in the district finals and enter the state tournament with high expectations.

“We have gotten better as the season has gone on,” Kasturirangan said. “We just want to go out and do our best and do what we’ve practiced. If we do that whatever happens, happens.”

West High has a pair of singles players this week in juniors Sam Shin and Sasha Chackalackal.

Shin enters with a 16-2 mark after defeating Chackalackal to win the district title.

Chackalackal brings a 15-3 mark to the state tournament.

The two losses for Shin have come to Linn-Mar’s VanDonslear and Rami Scheetz of Cedar Rapids Washington.

Shin has won 10 consecutive matches since his April 28 loss to Scheetz.

“Sam has no bad losses,” Gross said. “His two losses are to two really good players. Right now, he is playing the best he has played.”

Ames junior Tim Ellis placed third at the state meet a year ago and is the only semifinalist from last season that returns to singles play.

“Singles is probably a pretty open field,” Gross said. “Tim Ellis is a really good player but I look at someone like Sam Shin and if Sam gets hot he is going to be a tough out.”