Middle Creek’s boys tennis season has ended, leaving the team in 4th place in their respective conference with a record of 7-7. They’re sitting right in the middle, leading Apex Friendship (2-12), Holly Springs (5-9), Apex (6-8), and Cary High (0-14), but trailing Green Level, with a record of 10-4, and Panther Creek and Green Hope, both with a record of 13-1. The season began with a tough match against Holly Springs High, which ended favoring Middle Creek 5-4, and ended with a Middle Creek blowout against Cary High, 9-0.
According to Maxpreps, Middle Creek’s top six line up Included Jaeden Arthur at number one, Davis Hill at two, Quinn Falivena at three, Adam Badalamenti sitting at four, James Wyland at number five, and Clark Hardy as their number six. Most commonly Jaeden Arthur and Quinn Falivena would play together at doubles one, Davis Hill and Adam Badalamenti at doubles two, and lastly James Wyland and Clark Hardy at doubles three. Adam Badalamenti leads with the most wins for the team and a record of 18-13, followed by James Wyland with a 16-11 record, and Quinn Falivena with a win-to-loss ratio of 16-12.
Some of the biggest individual wins for Middle Creek include Quinn Falivena’s win over Juan Torres from Apex High School, which allowed Middle Creek to take the 5-4 win over Apex and allowed them to obtain their number 4 spot in the Conference. Another important win was Clark Hardy’s win over Holly Spring’s number six, Zane Bryan, with a final score of 6-4 - 7-5. This was during Middle Creek’s second encounter with Holly Springs and was Clark Hardy’s first top-six match of the season and the last match of the day. The last heavily important match also took place against Holly Springs with a match between Middle Creek’s Adam Badalamenti and Holly Springs’ Max Fleischer. The score began with split sets: 6-4 to Middle Creek and 3-6 to Holly Springs, but ended in a ten-point tiebreak 10-7 to Middle Creek. This was the last match of the first win, and one of the most important wins of the season.
To some, fourth place may not seem very good at first and probably doesn’t sound like something to be proud of, seeing as how Middle Creek wasn’t even able to make it into a dual teams tournament, but because of the recent conference change it made it much more difficult for Middle Creek to obtain a first or second place finish.
According to Middle Creek’s tennis coach, Coach Arthur, fourth place is nothing to sneeze at and is quite a great accomplishment considering that Middle Creek is in the same conference as Green Hope and Panther Creek, two of the best 10 teams in the state. Coach Arthur says, “This was the best we could’ve done in our conference.”
At the beginning of the year Coach Arthur and the team made a realistic goal to get fourth in the conference, which they successfully obtained. This, along with the fact that Coach Arthur won Coach of the Year at regionals, made it a pretty successful and prideful year for Middle Creek’s tennis team.