LEXINGTON – You’ve heard of speed dating? Welcome to speed tennis.
The one-night mixed doubles round robin is always one of the highlights of the News Journal Tennis Tournament and, because of the format, the competitors are always up against the clock.
Especially if you’re playing Hayliegh Tucker and Dylan Catanese.
Their success as a tandem Friday night at Lakewood Racquet Club should have been measured by a stopwatch.
To reach the Final Four in mixed, the 10 doubles teams set out to win as many games as possible in five 20-minute rounds. In the second round alone, Tucker and Catanese won 10 games.
They were no-ad games, but, still, you have to be in a serious zone to win at that pace.
Once they reached the semis, Tucker and Catanese were still playing like their hair was on fire. With the final two rounds switching to a mini-set — first to win four games — they took out the husband and wife team of Liz and Brennan Skulski 4-1 before blanking distant cousins Hannah and Cooper Remy 4-0 for the title.
“We were going by coach’s rules … I’m the coach, by the way, (so Dylan had no say),” Tucker joked. “If you’re winning, play fast. If you’re losing, play slowly. We were winning, so it was go, go, go.”
It was the second straight mixed crown for Tucker. Last year, she won with Lakewood manager Jansen Webster. They are co-coaches of the Lexington High School girls team.
“Jansen was out, so Dylan had to step up,” Tucker said. “I had to find the next best.”
The next best? Is that any way to talk about your next door neighbor?
“It felt less serious playing with Dylan,” Tucker said. “We just laughed the whole time. With Jansen, we’re the high school coaches so we felt like we had to win.”
The win gave Catanese a career Grand Slam in the News Journal. He is the reigning champ in men’s singles and doubles and also owns titles in pickleball, but he is sitting out the rest of the tournament after dislocating the pinkie finger on his right hand playing backyard football on the Fourth of July.
“I hadn’t played a lot of tennis this summer (because of the injury), but my serve was really good tonight and we just kept knocking off games,” said Catanese, who in 2024 won an OHSAA state doubles title with Ethan Remy for Lexington. “I’ve just been trying to get my grip strength back as much as I can.”
Catanese will be a sophomore at Ohio Northern, where his teammates will be the Remy brothers, Ethan and Cooper. Ethan transferred in from Tiffin and Cooper, who played No. 1 for Lexington this past spring, will be a freshman.
It was on another college campus, Wooster, where Catanese and Tucker worked a tennis camp together in June and decided they would make a pretty good doubles team.
“We played some of the counselors there,” Tucker said, “and whooped them.”
Brennan Skulski, a local orthodontist and another former Lex player, got a much too close look at how good Tucker and Catanese were together.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “We came out and won the first game and then Dylan served. We can’t return that. We were close … we were close on all of (his serves). And then I left (my wife) down. It was 3-3 (40-all) on her serve and he’s at the net, and I’m thinking I’ve got to hit the ball hard to get it past this guy. Instead, I had to run back and hit it over my head and then, from there, it was over. I had a chance to make it 2-1 (us), but that was a big momentum shifter there.
“The best thing about the News Journal for me is that you get to play these guys who are playing in college. You watch the pros on TV and this is the closest I get to see them and you see how hard these college guys can rip it. To see those shots up close, you take something from that, and appreciate it.”
The Skulskis were back in the mixed tournament after missing last year on maternity leave. Liz was pregnant with their third child, Liam. Their other two kids, Ellie, 9, and Reed, 6, played in the junior divisions of the tournament this summer and have also taken up golf with their parents.
Brennan plays tennis on Sunday mornings at Lakewood and Liz, who played for Lex as a senior, is in a Tuesday league.
“We’re trying to soak up all the time (with the kids) at home,” Brennan said. “These sports are about spending time together as a family and they’ll be able to play these sports for their whole life. It’s all about having fun.”
There was a distinct family theme to Friday’s competition. The Skulskis were joined by one other husband and wife team in Justin and Alyssa Csepe. Finalists Hannah and Cooper Remy are distant cousins. There were two father and daughter duos – Bobby and Quinn Reed and Mike and Corolene Cline – and even a brother and sister tandem in Ally and Cooper Brokaw.
Sue (Beathler) Brokaw, their mom, is a three-time women’s singles champ and their uncle, John, won men’s singles five times. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his first title.
The Brokaw siblings are accomplished themselves. Ally, who will be a freshman member of the tennis team at Allegheny (Pa.) University, won No. 1 singles last fall in the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament. Cooper duplicated that feat in the boys tournament and was league MVP this past spring.
“I thought Ally wasn’t that competitive, but she would beat Cooper in video games and try to win at everything she did,” Sue Brokaw said. “He’s the same way. We had to calm him down because he would throw a fit in the middle of a match. You’re beating yourself when you do that. Keep grounded.”
Sue’s husband, Joe, was a football player for Clear Fork.
“He’s more involved in tennis now than I am,” she said. “We have a stringer at home and he strings all the rackets. They’re watching (tennis) all the time and he gets out there and bats the ball around.”
Ally was a runner in middle school, but her dad and older sister, Riley, convinced her to try tennis in high school. So ended up playing all four years while running cross country at the same time.
Cooper was a midfielder on the Clear Fork soccer team that in 2025 won the first undisputed league title in program history.
Teaming up on the tennis court was bound to happen for the siblings, given the direction they got from their mom.
“She taught us when we were really tiny,” Ally said. “She knows so much about tennis. She’s a great coach.”
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Tucker, Catanese make fast work of their mixed doubles competition
Reporting by Jon Spencer, Mansfield News Journal / Mansfield News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jon Spencer, Mansfield News Journal | USA TODAY Network
