By BUTCH HARMON
DeWitt senior tennis player Sam Schuster and the rest of his senior teammates wrapped up their careers with a top-ten team finish at the Division 3 boys’ tennis finals at Kalamazoo.
DeWitt totaled six team points to finish in tenth place overall. Detroit Country Day won the team title, while East Grand Rapids finished second.
For Schuster, the final match of his high school tennis career was a loss to the eventual state champion at No. 1 singles, Garrett Goldman of East Grand Rapids. Goldman defeated Schuster 6-0, 6-2 in the quarterfinal round. Schuster reached the quarterfinals by defeating Chase Schultz of Cadillac 6-0, 6-0 in the first round and then defeating Eric Bartley of Sturgis 6-2, 6-4 in the second round.
Schuster finished the season with a 24-3 overall record. He won the No. 1 singles title at the conference tournament and was runner-up at the regional. “The season went better than I expected it to,” he said. “I wish I would’ve won the regional, but I did pretty well overall this year and the team did pretty well.”
Along with the team placing tenth at the state meet, DeWitt also took second place as a team at the regional meet.
“We had 11 returning seniors this year,” Schuster said. “We knew we had a real good chance to do well and we did.”
Schuster finished his tennis career at DeWitt with a record of 75-12. He began his career by playing No. 2 singles as a freshman, playing No. 2 doubles as a sophomore, moving up to No. 1 doubles as a junior, and playing at No. 1 singles this season.
“It was a big change this year not playing doubles, but I play a lot of USTA tennis, and that is all singles, so it was not that bad,” Schuster said.
Tennis is not the only sport that Schuster has played in high school. He was on the golf team as a freshman and played lacrosse as a sophomore. He may play lacrosse this spring if he does not get an offer to play tennis in college.
Schuster has a 3.75 grade-point average and plans to major in either business or management in college. He does not have an offer yet to play tennis in college but would like to have the opportunity to do so.