The Poplar Bluff Mules won the first SEMO Conference boys tennis tournament Friday, placing entrants in both the singles and doubles championship matches at Cape Central High School.
Brett Keele and Adeesh Mishra won the doubles championship, beating Matt Nussbaum and Levi Wilson, of Cape Central, 6-4, 6-2, in final.
The Mules' No. 1 singles player, Ben Stewart, lost 6-3, 6-4, to last year's state runner-up, Brett Johnson of Sikeston, in the championship match. Stewart led 4-3 in the second set.
The Mules finished with 21 points, beating second-place Cape Central by five. Sikeston was third with eight, Dexter was fourth with seven and Notre Dame was fifth with 6.5.
"We're pretty excited about it," Poplar Bluff coach Charlie Harper told the Southeast Missourian. "We thought we could. We certainly hoped we would. We were in the girls in the fall and didn't do too well there. We thought we'd get this one and we sure hoped so, the first one.
"This is a team kind of hitting a peak. ... We've had two district titles, which were the first and back-to-back, and that was great. This is just a nice little icing on the cake to that."
The Mules also brought home a fourth-place finish in doubles. Jackson Winters and Ethan Johnson lost 6-0, 6-4, to Garrett Hesselrode and Hayden Morrill, of Notre Dame, in the third-place match.
Dexter's Eric Hahn placed third, beating Devon Tiemann, of Cape Central, 6-3, 6-1.
--DAR Staff