photo by: Photo courtesy Aaron Clark

The Free State boys tennis team poses after the Sunflower League meet on Thursday, April 30, 2026, in Olathe.

The Free State boys tennis team finished as the runner-up in Thursday’s Sunflower League tennis meet in Olathe, as the Firebirds’ top-two singles players finished first and second in the singles bracket.

The Firebirds finished with a total team score of 72, which was four points behind league champions Shawnee Mission East. Lawrence placed sixth of 14 teams with 29 points.

Free State’s Micah Ward and Ishaan Rao earned 21 and 20 points, respectively, for taking the top two spots in the singles bracket. Ward entered as the No. 1 seed and finished with the league championship. After an opening bye, Ward won his first two matches 8-0. He beat No. 4 seeded Christopher Long from Shawnee Mission East in the semifinal round 8-1 to reach the championship. There, he won 8-2.

Rao entered as the No. 2 seed and reached the final round. After a first-round bye, Rao won 8-0 in his first two matches. He defeated the No. 3 seeded Christian Clough from Shawnee Mission East 8-0 to reach the singles championship round, where he lost to Ward.

Free State’s top doubles team of Drew Harrison and Andrew McCall took fifth, while the No. 2 doubles team of Aiden Hixson and Eli Risley finished eighth. Harrison and McCall entered as the No. 6 seed and started with an 8-1 win in their first match. They won their next match 8-1 to reach the quarterfinal, where they lost 8-3.

Harrison and McCall took on Hixson and Risley in the first placement match and won 8-5. That put the duo in the fifth-place match, which they won over Mill Valley’s team 8-6.

Hixson and Risley started with an 8-1 win in the first match, followed by an 8-7 tiebreaker win in the following round. The two Firebirds lost in the quarterfinal match to the eventual league champions. Hixson and Risley then lost to their teammates in the placement bracket before falling to Lawrence’s top doubles team in the seventh-place match.

Lawrence’s Julian Bricker entered as the No. 11 seed and finished 13th individually. He started with an 8-0 win but lost his second match 8-4, which put Bricker in the ninth-through-16th bracket. He started with an 8-6 loss, which put him on track for 13th. He picked up an 8-2 win in the following round to reach the 13th-place match, which he won in an 8-7 tiebreaker.

Lawrence’s Oliver Hester lost his first match 8-0 in the singles bracket, putting him in the consolation bracket. There, he lost 8-4 in his second match.

Both of Lawrence’s doubles teams finished in the top 18 and scored team points. The top team of Jack Bauch and Koh Brewer finished seventh with 15 points, while the No. 2 team of Wyatt Freed and Eli Iskandrani scored five points by placing 17th.

Bauch and Brewer won their first match 8-1 and their second match 8-3 to reach the quarterfinal round. There, the two Lions lost 8-3 to the No. 4-seeded doubles team.

In the fifth-through-eighth bracket, Bauch and Brewer lost 8-5 in their first match to the eventual sixth-place finishers but beat Free State’s No. 2 doubles team 8-4 to take seventh.

Freed and Iskandrani started as the No. 16 seed and lost their first match in an 8-7 tiebreaker to Mill Valley’s No. 17-seeded doubles team. The duo rebounded in the consolation bracket, winning the rest of the way to take 17th.

Free and Iskandrani started with a bye and an 8-2 win in the semifinal. A close 8-7 tiebreaker got the doubles team in the 17th-place match, which the doubles team won 8-5.

Lawrence and Free State will compete in the Gardner Edgerton regional tournament on Friday against seven other teams, six of which are teams from the Sunflower League.