WHEELING — Rochelle’s three state qualifiers were expecting the quality of tennis at the state tournament to be outstanding.

It didn’t take them a long time to realize just how right they were.

Singles player Thomas Brennan and the Hubs’ doubles team of Alex Lang and John Micahel Loggins lost their opening matches to ranked opponents on Thursday morning and were eliminated later in the day after losing their consolation matches.

Lang and Loggins forced a tiebreaker in their second match, but that was the closest Rochelle came to winning a set.

“The level of competition is just ridiculous,” RTHS coach Mike Pence said. “We’re still playing just as well as we did at sectionals, but there’s just a tremendous increase in the quality of opponents at state.”

Brennan lost his opener to Effingham’s Kory Poland 6-1, 6-1. In his second match, he fell to Gabe Cheng of Rock Island 6-0, 6-1.



Lang and Loggins were shut out by Hitoshi Kawashima and Calvin Mang of New Trier in their first match and fell to Carson Boyd and Danny Torres of Wheaton Academy in their second.

Boyd and Torres won a first set tiebreaker and cruised to a 6-1 win in the second set.

“The tiebreaker made a big difference,” Pence said. “With the other team winning it, they got the momentum going into the second set.”

Pence said he was proud of the way his seniors competed. Tennis is one of the few remaining IHSA sports that isn’t divided into classes.

“They knew they were up against it right off the bat, but they never stopped trying. They worked hard and won some good points. They were just playing too good of teams,” he said.