Lewis and Clark swept Kaskaskia on April 6 in the teams' last showdown before the Region 24 Championship on April 26th.
Against arguably Kaskaskia's best doubles team, Buddy Hippen and Cordell Powless completed the doubles sweep with a 9-8 tiebreaker win. Joe Hawkes was ill but still played, rallying from a loss in the first set to winning the next 6-2 and the third set tiebreaker 10-7.
All five other singles matches featured exceptional performances by Trailblazers. At #1, Kyle Stickler matched up well with his opponent Anthony Hallam - each possessing excellent defense paired with the ability to come to the net. As Stickler got warmed up, he began to pull away from Hallam, who couldn't match Stickler's consistency or net attack.
"Stickler won the first set 6-4, and then put on a show in the second set, hitting beautiful angled volleys and spectacular passing shots when
pressed at the baseline," said Head Coach James Humphrey.
At #3 Nathan Stachowski smothered his opponent Taylor Powless (Kaskaskia), keeping the ball in play until he got an opportunity to come to the net or force T. Powless into an error with solid forehands.
At #4 the Trailblazers' Cordell Powless used a combination of offense and defense to dominate Eric Smith. C. Powless used his big serve and forehand to control points. He used defensive slices to nullify Smith's big serve, breaking him often.
At #5 Buddy Hippen found last year's form using his powerful serve and consistent baseline game to overwhelm Kaleb Bone. Hippen found a perfect mixture of offense and defense on the baseline - handling Bone's huge forehands and then using his own heavy topspin forehands and mixture of slice and two-handed backhands to win points.
At #6 Kirk Tass only dropped one game to the same opponent who had taken him to a third set in the teams' previous match.
"Tass' forehand and backhand consistency were excellent - especially the forehand where he was using topspin extremely effectively," Humphrey said.
LCCC 9, Kaskaskia 0
#1D: Stickler/Stachowski won over Murphy/Powless 8-4
#2D: Hawkes/Tass won over Smith/Bone 8-6
#3D: Hippen/Powless won over Hallam/Knox 9-8 (4)
#1S: Kyle Stickler won over Anthony Hallam 6-4, 6-1
#2S: Joe Hawkes won over Sam Murphy 5-7, 6-2, 1-0 (7)
#3S: Nathan Stachowski won over Taylor Powless 6-0, 6-2
#4S: Cordell Powless won over Eric Smith 6-0, 6-2
#5S: Buddy Hippen won over Kaleb Bone 6-2, 6-1
#6S: Kirk Tass won over Tyler Knox 6-1, 6-0