MADISON — Tegan Schott played well enough this spring to bring some legitimate confidence to the Nielsen Tennis Center this weekend.
He didn’t get the chance for competition before meeting up with the second seed because his first-round opponent withdrew. So Schott had to be ready for second-seeded Michael Pan of Grafton when they faced off at noon Friday in the WIAA Division 2 singles bracket.
Schott (24-5) beat Pan (20-3) 6-3, 3-6, 10-8 to get to the quarterfinal round before Appleton Xavier’s Kojo Norman beat Schott 4-6, 6-1, 10-6 to send him to the fifth-place match in the state boys tennis tournament on Saturday.
Schott said he was ready for the competition.
“I did feel really good,” Schott said. “I knew it was going to be a tough match, but I was pretty excited for it. I knew he was a good player.”
The players exchanged wins in the first two games before Pan took an 8-6 lead in the tiebreaker. Schott scored the final four points for the victory and chance to continue.
“It was pretty back and forth in the breaker,” Schott said. “”I just tried my best to stay composed and pulled through.”
Schott won the first set against Norman in a quarterfinal battle between unseeded qualifiers, but Norman came back and claimed the second set 6-1.
“I knew him and played him as a sophomore at an (invitational),” Schott said. “I knew that was also going to be a tough match, but I started to get a little worn out.
“In the breaker, things just didn’t go my way.”
Schott plays New Berlin Eisenhower’s Aidan Metcalf (27-5) at 8:30 a.m. Saturday. A win there puts him in the fifth-place match against either Kohler’s Dylan Grueneberg (27-6) or New Berlin Eisenhower’s Tommy Heinrich (26-6), who is the fifth seed.
