WEST SALEM — This week is always an interesting one for West Salem High School senior Kyle Hehli.
The spring sports season is in general, but this particular stretch of days present quite a challenge as he attacks the WIAA postseason in two sports.
His weekend and Monday were filled with both tennis and golf practices before focus began on his Division 2 Hayward Sectional golf tournament on Tuesday.
That included a practice round on the course in preparation for Wednesday’s competition and his last chance to qualify for two state tournaments in the same season.
“It’s definitely a lot,” Hehli , who helped the Panthers qualify for the Division 2 sectional finals in basketball over the winter, said on Monday. “It’s been tennis in the morning and golf later in the day and a really busy schedule.”
Hehli’s go-to sport is tennis. His dad, Bill, coaches the sport at UW-La Crosse, and his older brother, Jack, plays for the Eagles. It’s a family sport that sucked him in when young, and he has qualified for the individual state tournament four times with top-five finishes in all three performances.
He and Jack won the Division 2 doubles championship when Kyle was a freshman, and he followed that up with fifth-, then fourth-place finishes as a singles player.
Hehli is seeded second with a 23-2 record and won’t play at the Nielsen Tennis Stadium until noon on Friday, when he matches up with either Kohler freshman Preston Chen (15-13) or Shorewood sophomore Nolan Johnson (6-10) in the second round. A win there puts him in the quarterfinals Friday afternoon.
He said he’ll be at Nielsen on Thursday evening to watch his friend and teammate, Jesse Miller (11-4), play his first-round match against Lakeland senior Dominic Gironella (22-6) before starting to get in the right mindset for his final run in the facility.
The possibility exists that Hehli could finish his season the ame way it began — with a match against Waukesha Catholic Memorial sophomore Oliver Milleman (21-1). Hehli’s first match of the season was against Milleman, who is the top seed in this bracket.
“It was about two weeks after basketball season ended, and it was a really good match,” Hehli said. “He beat me 7-6, 7-5, but I hadn’t played a lot of tennis yet. I got off to a slow start and was down 3-0, so that threw me off a little bit.”
Hehli’s only other loss this season was to Green Bay Notre Dame junior Alex Thomas (24-1), who is seeded third in the Division 1 singles bracket.
That’s where another very familiar opponent — Aquinas senior Anderson Fortney — will play. Fortney (29-3), who placed third in Division 2 the past two seasons and beat Hehli for third place last year, is seeded 10th in Division 1.
“It’s always awesome to play against him,” Hehli said of Fortney, also a four-time state qualifier. “He is one heck of a tennis player, and he really pushes me. He’s always my longest match of the season, and you have to be ready for every moment.
“It’s a high level of tennis, and a lot of people come to watch us play.”
Hehli and Fortney didn’t matchup up during the team’s dual meet this season. Fortney played doubles, and Hehli beat state doubles qualifier Jaedan Silcox in the No. 1 singles spot. Competing in different brackets gives both the chance to come home with state titles.
“We talked in the past about how great it would be to play each other for the state championship, but then Aquinas was bumped up to Division 1,” Hehli said. “It’s kind of nice that we won’t see each other because we could both win.”
The top two teams and top three individuals not on those teams at Wednesday’s sectional qualify for the state golf tournament at University Ridge in Madison on June 9-10.
Should Hehli make it to the final day of tennis and qualify for golf, he’ll have one day between competitions with the caveat that they are in the same city.
