BCHS wins third straight section boys tennis championship
The last time the Bakersfield Christian boys tennis team lost a section playoff match was during an abbreviated season, the year after COVID-19 forced the cancellation of all spring sports.
It was 2021 and it happened in Hanford, a hard-fought section final with top-seeded Sierra Pacific holding on for a dramatic 5-4 victory.
On Wednesday, the two teams squared off at BCHS and this time the Eagles left little to chance, sweeping past the Golden Bears 9-0 for their third straight Central Section championship.
“I think it means a lot to our program, to these guys, to this school,” said Nikki Hiebert, first-year Bakersfield Christian boys tennis coach. She also coaches the girls tennis team. “They really wanted this for themselves. They’re very self-motivated. It means a lot for them to continue the tradition and to work hard. I’m just really proud of them.”
It is Bakersfield Christian’s second straight Division II title after winning the D-III crown in 2022, upsetting host Sierra Pacific in the semifinals along the way.
On Wednesday, the Eagles’ No. 1 doubles team of Zeb Duket and Austin Cusator started off slow, and trailed Sierra Pacific’s Victor Lopez and Luke Fagundes 5-4 in the opening set.
But between games, the South Yosemite Valley League champions regrouped. The duo won the next nine games, closing out the first set 7-5 and then cruising to a 6-0 victory to give BCHS a 2-0 lead.
“I think going in there were nerves,” Hiebert said. “I told them ‘this is normal for this situation.’ Also just the expectation of winning, maybe some pressure, so they usually take a few games to try to figure out the situation and figure out what works so they can get themselves going. But they’ve proved that they can do that over and over. They make adjustments until they start to get into their groove.”
Bakersfield Christian’s No. 2 doubles featuring a pair of freshmen, Cade Hiebert and David Hair, made short work of their opponents, cruising to a 6-0, 6-0 win, and teammates Eugene Mokri and Adrian Araya disposed of Danny Serrano and Kristopher Cervantez, 6-1, 6-1 to make it 3-0 heading into singles play.
“It’s pretty cool, we have a really good team, so coming into this year I was pretty pumped because I knew we could do some good things,” said Cade Hiebert, the coach’s son. “And we did.”
As it turned out, the Eagles were just getting warmed up.
Duket continued his strong play, posting a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Lopez, and Hair followed with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Fagundes to clinch the victory with still four singles matches to play.
“We knew we had a lot of great guys on the team,” Hair said. “I just tried to do my best in the position that I had and get as many wins for the teams as I could. I feel like we’ve done good this year.”
Hiebert, Cusator and Bryan Tran followed with straight-set wins, and Beckham Rader finished things off with a 5-7, 6-3 and 10-8 in a super tiebreaker.
The Eagles’ victory is all the more impressive considering they repeated without Ryan Bashirtash, last year’s BVarsity All-Area boys tennis player of the year, who won the section singles championship as a senior last year.
“At the beginning of the season we had some freshmen come in and so I think there was an adjustment of having new players and working together to become part of a team,” Nikki Hiebert said. “I think there was a lot of learning that happened with that, and growth. And I think the seniors really provided a lot of leadership.”
Duket, Cusator, Hiebert and Hair will all be competing in the two-day Central Section individual championships in San Luis Obispo starting Friday.
“They’ve just been a team that all gets along, they all pull for each other, they enjoy each other and they play hard for each other,” Nikki Hiebert said. “It’s just a great team.”
