No male tennis player representing Evanston in the past 40 years has accomplished what Finn Pollard did the past two weeks, earning Central Suburban League South division and then Class 2A sectional championships in singles play.
Now the Evanston senior has his eyes on an even bigger prize. Pollard and the Evanston Township High School doubles team of Evan Gerbie and Mike Wasilewicz will open play Thursday in the Illinois High School Association state tournament after surviving rugged competition last weekend at the New Trier Sectional tourney.
Pollard is seeded in the 5-8 range – moving up from the 9-16 state seed he earned as a junior – and will face Evan Henneberg of Normal Community in the first round of singles competition set for Hoffman Estates High School.
Gerbie and Wasilewicz, meanwhile, will be matched against Dimitri Hutnyk and David Motorga of Prospect at Prospect in doubles. Competition is slated to begin at 9 a.m. in the double elimination tournament.
Pollard, now 19-3 on the season, is aiming for Evanston’s first Illinois High School Association state medal since the doubles team of Jeff Gordon and Adam Wadsworth placed seventh back in 1985.
Evanston’s last singles medal? You have to go all the way back to Dan More’s fifth place effort in 1973.
Defeated No. 1 seed
That’s a lot of history for Pollard to overcome. But the senior standout is coming off his biggest win of the season in the sectional final, where he topped the No. 1 seed – Garvin Murray of Von Steuben – by a 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 margin in the title match. Murray finished sixth at state last year.
Gerbie and Wasilewicz placed third and also qualified for state. The top four finishers in both singles and doubles earned spots at the three-day tournament, which will be conducted at various sites in the northwest suburbs and will conclude Saturday at Palatine High School.
Two of Pollard’s losses this season came against players seeded 3-4 at state: Lane Tech junior Marko McRae and Hinsdale Central senior Alex Kotarski. Mitch Sheldon of Hersey and Andrew Spurck of Fremd own the top two seeds.
At the sectional, Pollard scored wins over Miguel DeLava of Niles West (6-0, 6-0), Nick Boukalis of Niles North (6-0, 6-0) and Stan Okesson of New Trier (6-1, 6-4) to reach state for the second straight year. He beat the heat – and Murray – with a little help from ETHS head coach Marcus Plonus in the championship showdown.
‘Played their hearts out’
“There was some great tennis in that match. They both played their hearts out,” Plonus
recalled. “At one point during a changeover in the third set – I think it was 3-all at the time – I asked the trainer there for a big bag of ice.
“There were about 75 or 80 people there and all of a sudden they got very quiet when they saw me bringing that ice out. I guess they thought Finn might be injured. But I just put the ice bag on the back of his neck, to cool him off, and I told him ’cooler heads will prevail today.’ I think it helped.
“Finn is a rare athlete. He has a great work ethic, and he has natural talent, too. He always has the heart and the fire to fight to the end of the match, and that’s what he did in that match. He’s grown a couple of inches since last year, so he has more power and he’s able to cover the court better, too. He just needs to believe that he can dictate points and set the tempo, that he no longer has to be on the defensive when he’s playing all those 6-foot-4 guys.
“We’re looking for big things this weekend.”
Gerbie will also be making a return trip to state after qualifying in singles last year. He only recently paired up with Wasilewicz in doubles to find an easier path to state in his final season for the Wildkits.
At the sectional, the pair defeated Hudson Maks and Tabraik Hamid of Niles North by a 6-0, 6-0, margin, then lost to New Trier’s Jovan Morales and Chris Ackerman 6-4, 6-2 in the semifinals. The Wildkit duo led 2-0 in the third-place match when the Loyola team of Sam Cho and Danny Birmingham defaulted.