Manhattan High’s varsity boys tennis team left early Tuesday morning for the first meet of the season. The Indians went on to win against Junction City on Thursday and take first place out of six teams at the Salina Central Invitation on Saturday.

“I was just so proud today [Tuesday]. It’s the first match of the season and it’s a long match,” coach Joyce Allen said. “There were actually three brackets — there were a ton of kids. It was tough on the boys. It’s one thing to play four matches when it’s 55/65 degrees but wow, when it’s close to 80 you’re dragging. But it was fun. They were ready to play and I thought they did really, really well. The three teams that came in second? The first match they lost was in the finals. All three of them were tired and it was just a matter of who was going to pull through in the final match, but they did a great job.”

No. 1 doubles was played by seniors Ben Gorman and Justin Gittle, who placed eleventh and No. 2 doubles was played by juniors Kevin Harper and Jacob Richards, who took second place. Junior Bryan Armbrust took second in his bracket playing No. 1 singles while seniors Conner Stanley, who played No. 2 singles, and Fawwaz Naeem, who played No. 3 singles, took thirteenth and second, respectively.

“I heard a rumor that for the first match, if you lose you won’t play at all and so I was like ‘I have to win the first one’,” Naeem said. “It was very tough. It was amazing, [I felt] proud. I felt like the other team also deserved to win because they were really good too but I was happy and exhausted.”

Naeem has been playing tennis for almost two years.

“I love tennis,” Naeem said. “I’ve been in America for two years and I remember second semester of sophomore year…the bus was taking us home and I saw the tennis courts and I was like ‘I have to play tennis.’ So I took my brother and we went and played.”

The teams also came out of their first home meet strong, winning nine out of twelve matches.

“The meet was great. I played doubles at first with Yujiene (Andrada, senior), my friend. We lost tiebreaker and then after doubles I played singles and after a long match I won tiebreaker,” Naeem said. “It was great, I was very happy [and] exhausted. I was like ‘I’ll just finish this’ and lucky enough, I got a pretty good serve and I won the last point.”

The team is hopeful, looking to its next meet at Washburn on April 7.

“I had to narrow down the varsity team to 15 and we’ve got a good JV team. I’m really excited. I think I have a strong team and the JV team is strong too,” Allen said. “I have high hopes. We placed fourth at League last year — I would like to place higher than that this year. I would like to take six kids back to State and I would like to do better at State as well.”