LEXINGTON — It was an amicable split — and, so far, a successful one.
After earning All-Ohio honors in doubles last season, Lexington’s Cooper Remy and Philip Etzel decided to go their separate ways on the tennis court this spring. On Saturday it resulted in a pair of Division II sectional titles.
With rain forcing the completion of the two-day tournament indoors at Lakewood Racquet Club, Etzel won the singles championship with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Clear Fork’s Cooper Brokaw. Lex then made it two-for-two as Remy collaborated with Tony Palmer for a 6-3, 7-5 win over their teammates, Ben Wiltanger and Jack Campbell, in doubles.
“Me and Phil are on good terms. Don’t worry, we’re still good friends,” Remy said, smiling. “It’s just that Tony’s been coming down to Columbus (with me) a lot, putting in a lot of time. We’ve been taking doubles lessons down there and playing in a lot of tournaments together.”
Remy and Palmer won a couple of USTA tournaments together and carried that momentum into the high school season.
“Tony and I beat a good Centerville team and then we got second (a day later) in the Lexington Invite (one of the top regular season tournaments in Ohio),” Remy said. “We also beat a good Massillon Jackson team.”
This sectional tournament was a good way for Lex to turn the page after having its seven-year reign atop the Ohio Cardinal Conference come to an end last week at the hands of Wooster.
The Minutemen will likely host Ottawa Hills sometime in the next two weeks for the Northwest District berth in the Final Four of the Ohio Tennis Coaches Association state team tournament. And coach Ron Schaub believes all five of his district qualifiers Saturday have a shot at making it to the state tournament outside of Cincinnati in two weeks.
“We’ve been working hard,” Schaub said. “We just haven’t been able to knock off a really good team. We didn’t win the conference, which was really hard. But if we can get multiple people to state, that would be like saying, we’ve played good and this is what happened.”
Remy, a senior, and Palmer, a junior, lost only one game in three matches before Saturday’s All-Lex doubles final, where Wiltanger and Campbell pretty much played them on equal terms.
The second place duo has to be feeling pretty good about itself heading into districts Thursday and Saturday in Port Clinton, especially after knocking off Willard’s second-seeded tandem of Levi Schag and Mason Dawson 7-5, 6-3 in the semifinals.
Wiltanger, a senior, and Campbell, a junior, were seeded third.
“Ben and Jack also got to the finals last year (losing to Etzel and Remy), and this year’s championship match was pretty much dead even,” Schaub said. “It came down to a couple of points. They’re more seasoned this year. They’ve got a shot (at making it to state).”
Schaub feels just as strongly about Remy and Palmer winning a district championship.
“They’ve practiced a lot together, so, hopefully, they can turn it on for districts,” he said. “They both have good groundstrokes, so they can make it happen.”
The top four placers in singles and doubles locked up berths at district. Also advancing from the area were Ontario’s fourth-place doubles team of Henry Yugovich and Justin Switaj, while Kade Beachy joins his Clear Fork teammate, Brokaw, at Port Clinton after finishing third in singles.
Etzel would like to match the district singles title his older brother, Karl, won for Lex in 2023.
“That would be nice,” the Lex junior said. “I’ll have to play pretty good because Ottawa Hills has two players who are pretty solid, that I could lose to or beat. So I’ll have to be at the top of my game.
“Everything feels solid right now. Compared to last year I have a lot more consistency, especially with my serve. I was able to develop a kick serve over the off-season. I didn’t have one of those last year. That helps a lot because last year my second serve wasn’t very good, especially against the top players.”
Having a shot at earning All-Ohio honors in singles one year after pulling it off in doubles speaks volumes about Etzel’s versatility.
“I was fine with doing either,” he said. “I’m pretty flexible about things like that. I don’t set my mind to one thing. I’m ready to do everything on the fly, pretty easily.
“I like doubles because you and your teammate can cheer together and you get hyped with them. It’s more mentally tough playing singles, not having someone right there to support me. But in singles, you don’t have anyone counting on you, so there’s a little less pressure.”
Wiltanger has shown his own flexibility, playing doubles with several different partners over the last two seasons. He won an OCC title at No. 1 doubles last year with 2024 state doubles champ Dylan Catanese and an OCC title at No. 2 doubles last week with Brighton Boemer.
Now he’s riding with Campbell.
“It’s a little challenging (switching partners), but you’ve got to be a swing player,” Wiltanger said. “Playing with Dylan last year, even though it was just one time, helped me get used to playing with someone else. And I adjusted to actually winning, too. That was a big thing. We actually won something big. That was the first time I played in the conference and won.
“This tournament showed that Jack and I can play ‘up’ (in competition) and that we can play good when we play up.”
But Campbell was also a realist.
“We came in knowing we probably weren’t going to win, but we just did our best,” he said. “I think Ben and I have good chemistry; we always know what each other is doing. He’s very good at the net and my groundstrokes complement that.
“(Remy and Palmer) just don’t miss as much as we do.”
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: No longer a pair, Lex’s Etzel and Remy still dominate sectional tennis
Reporting by Jon Spencer, Mansfield News Journal / Mansfield News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
