Faith Lutheran boys down Palo Verde for 2nd straight 5A title — PHOTOS
Wild rain and weather pushed back Faith Lutheran boys tennis team’s state semifinal last Thursday to Friday, and eventually to Saturday.
That meant the Class 5A team state title match was moved to Monday. None of that seemed to impact Faith Lutheran.
The second-seeded Crusaders defeated No. 1 Palo Verde 10-4 to win their second straight 5A team state champion on a windy and cool late afternoon Monday at Palo Verde. It’s the third team state title for Faith Lutheran.
“It was the goal that we had set for ourselves,” Faith Lutheran coach Keith Fridrich said. “We tried to come into this season just wanting to win this state championship, not really worrying about winning a second (straight). But the fact that we have, it certainly makes it super, super special.”
Faith Lutheran was scheduled to play Coronado in the state semifinal last Thursday. The Crusaders had a bye as the No. 2 seed and played their last regular-season match on Sept. 29. Rain on Thursday pushed the match to the following day and it was eventually played Saturday afternoon after another rainstorm Friday.
“We played on Saturday, two days ago, and that’s because of the win and rain, but it actually gave us an advantage because we got to play in the wind on Saturday and get used to it,” senior Beckham Butler said.
That helped Faith Lutheran take an 8-4 lead heading into the final round of matches. The doubles team of Davey Gluth and Paul Williams won their match in the final round to reach the 10 points necessary for the Crusaders to win the title.
“You can’t really describe the feeling,” senior Aleksei Zilberman said. “It’s too good of a feeling to describe, but all in all, it was just a really great effort all around and I’m really proud of our boys.”
The other matches ended after that, and Faith Lutheran celebrated winning a second title by spraying sparking apple cider on the Palo Verde soccer field behind the tennis courts.
“We won the matches that we were supposed to win and we got some wins against the people that we weren’t really supposed to win against,” senior Samuel Gastaldo said. “That’s how sports goes. I’m just really happy of our result.”
Sophomore Tyson Young came up huge for Faith Lutheran. He won his two singles matches against Palo Verde’s two top singles players — Mikele Longo and Balin Gupta — to give the Crusaders two points. Young was down 4-0 to Gupta before rallying for a 6-4 win.
“That was a huge point,” Fridrich said of Young’s win. “We just got contributions from all the way through the lineup and that’s really what we wanted to do. I’m so very happy with the way things worked.
Gluth and Williams lost both of their matches against Coronado in the state semifinals, but won two of their three matches Monday against Palo Verde. Gastaldo and doubles partner Michael Bergin won all three of their doubles matches.
Palo Verde defeated Faith Lutheran in the regular season and that was the Crusaders first loss of the year after going undefeated in 2024.
“Coming into this week, we had so much confidence that we were going to do it,” Butler said. “It just means so much that this was our last match of our season year, so it feels so good to come out with the dub.”
3A boys regionals
* No. 1 Boulder City 14, No. 2 Coral Academy 4: At Boulder City, the Eagles defeated Coral Academy to win the Southern League title on Monday. The match was postponed from Friday after rain wiped out Boulder City’s semifinal last Thursday. Both teams advance to the 3A state tournament Oct. 23 and 24 at Bishop Gorman.
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.