Okemos, Genschaw Earn D2 Celebrations
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
October 21, 2017
KALAMAZOO — Okemos went home with the team trophy Saturday, but no one celebrated an individual medal with more exuberance than Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central senior Connor Genschaw at No. 1 singles.
The Chiefs won their first Lower Peninsula Division 2 title in 10 years before the finals even started at Kalamazoo College.
No. 3 doubles clinched the championship in the semifinals when top seeds Deniz Kalfa and Druv Talluri defeated Midland Dow’s fifth seeds, Ryan Killmaster and Kevin Kraef, 6-3, 6-0, to seal the win.
Kalfa and Talluri were two of six Chiefs who ended the season without losing a match.
“I don’t take a lot of credit for that (state title),” Okemos coach Chris Silker said. “These kids have worked really, really hard.
“We have an incredibly vested community that is behind the kids 110 percent. I think that’s the key to our success.”
Okemos dominated with 36 points. Birmingham Groves and Midland Dow tied for second with 21 each and Forest Hills Central was fourth with 20. Birmingham Seaholm (18) rounded out the top five.
Genschaw, the second seed, was bolstered by the roar of the crowd cheering on every winner and carrying him to a 6-0, 4-6, 6-1 win over top seed Gabe Liss of Birmingham Groves in the final.
Genschaw was swamped by teammates on the court after the match.
“It’s a culmination of all four years going into this match,” Genschaw said. “I had to cap it off with this one. It means so much to me emotionally.
“Now I’m not going into my life saying, ‘Oh, I lost in the finals in my senior year.’ Now I can say I got a state championship my senior year, and it’s awesome.”
Genschaw breezed through the first set but by the second, “I think I exhausted myself playing so well in the first set. I was honestly on fire in the first set, and I got really tired in the second set.
“Then the last set, I was like, this is my senior year. I’ve got to push as hard as I could. I ended up winning the last set, 6-1. It was all mental at that point.”
“Expecting it would be more than I would say coming in, but I sure hoped he could do it,” Central coach Dan Bolhouse added. “He played well throughout the tournament.
“He plays a lot of tournaments out of season so he was mentally prepared to play some tough opponents.”
Liss said he knew the match would be a challenge.
“He’s a senior, and he was thriving in the atmosphere,” the Groves junior said. “He had the crowd firing him up. It was his last year, and he was playing the best he could.”
After dropping the first set at love, “I just tried taking it one game at a time,” Liss added. “I knew the score was 6-0, but the games were closer and I was still in the match and (I knew) that I could keep fighting back for every point.”
No. 2 and 3 singles also featured Groves players with second seed Gabe Vidinas defeating top seed Josh Portnoy of Okemos, 6-1, 7-5, at No. 2 and Jonah Liss losing to top seed Shrey Patel of Okemos, 6-2, 6-4.
Portnoy and Patel are both freshmen.
“Shrey and Josh have been a big part of our success,” Silker said. “They both went undefeated this season until Josh’s final loss today against Gabe Vidinas.
“Even though (Portnoy) had a win over him during the season, Gabe played much better today and I think a little bit of that was his veteran experience.”
Vidinas’ match featured such long points that his two-setter took as long as the first flight’s three.
After streaking to a 4-0 lead to start the match, Vidinas won 6-1 but then had to fight for the second set.
“I played him twice before and he grinds; he’s very tough to play,” Vidinas said of Portnoy. “Every time I always have to be playing my best to beat him. It was a tough match.
“I could tell he wasn’t playing his best in the first set. I did my best to play my game.”
Vidinas, a junior, called for a trainer at 6-5 of the second set.
“I was cramping quite a bit,” he said. “Luckily I aced him to get to the changeover. I just held it in and toughed it out (to win).”
With teammates playing next to him, “The energy of my teammates makes me play better and I can be shouting and hollering all the time and my teammates can support me,” Vidinas said. “It’s always nice.”
Portnoy a freshman, said he knew what happened in the first set and tried to change it for the second.
“I was playing too offensive,” he said. “I kept missing deep. I think I should have played safer.”
By the second set, “I just decided his forehand is really strong,” Liss said. “His backhand wasn’t as good, but it was still pretty good.
“I’m like, I’ll just keep it to his backhand and he won’t be able to attack as much. It worked.”
The Patel match featured two freshmen in the third-flight final.
“I had to stay calm, be confident and move (Jonah Liss) around,” Patel said. “He played a lot better in the second set.”
Liss said playing on one of the front courts was “cool.”
“I’ve watched a few (USTA) national tournaments here,” he said. “It felt really cool. I’ve seen a lot of great players play here.”
Portage Central senior Vishu Ghantasala, the second seed at No. 4 singles, expected a tough opponent and he got it, losing to Okemos top-seeded junior Daniel Gorelik, 6-0, 6-1.
Ghantasala got a look at Gorelik during the semis.
“I saw Daniel playing next to me and he was done a good hour, hour and a half before me, so I knew it was going to be really tough when I had to play just a half hour after I was done,” Ghantasala said.
“A couple of my teammates have played him and they gave me some tips, but in the end it was really hard.”
Although his team already had the team trophy, Gorelik, who lost just three games the entire tournament, said that did not affect his play.
“The mindset was still just go out there and do your job, not let up,” he said. “You’ve got to get to the ultimate goal.”
Gorelik, who finished the season undefeated, said his teammates pushed each other all year.
“We have a lot of talent on the team this year and it makes it much better when you have a lot of good people to hit with,” he said.
Okemos’ No. 3 doubles team featured a senior (Kalfa) and a freshman (Talluri) who went undefeated all season.
Playing in his first state tournament, “It feels crazy,” Talluri said. “It’s just a crazy time. Everything just happened so fast. It was so much fun with the team.”
Kalfa felt a bit of pressure.
“This match was a lot different than any other match I’ve played knowing it’s my last high school match,” he said.
Partnering all season, “Mentally we became more than friends, more than partners, like brothers almost,” Kalfa said of Talluri.
“We always brought each other up, even today when we were both down mentally, the other one was trying their best to bring us up. He’s the best partner I could ask for.”
The duo defeated Seaholm’s second seeds, Aidan O’Neill and Max Levitsky, 7-5, 5-7, 6-0, in the final.
Okemos swept the doubles flights.
Other winners were second seeds Dinakar Talluri and Zal Chinoy at No. 1, top seeds Rohan Shah and Siddharth Agisetty, who did not lose a match all season, at No. 2; and second seeds Karthik Kolisetty and Aditya Kandula at No. 4.
PHOTOS: (Top) Okemos celebrates its Division 2 championship Saturday at Kalamazoo College. (Middle) Forest Hills Central's Connor Genschaw returns a volley during his No. 1 singles match. (Top photo by HighSchoolSportsScene.com; bottom photo by Pam Shebest.)
'House Larry Built' Celebrates Nykerk's Work Constructing TC Central Tennis
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
September 26, 2025
Legendary.
If you don’t know much about the history of Traverse City Central tennis, all you have to do is take a stroll through the newly-renovated and named Larry Nykerk Trojan Tennis Center.
The facility was named after the long-time coach as this season commenced.
Nykerk, whose tennis legacy in Traverse City reaches back to 1968 when he launched a brand-new junior varsity boys tennis program at Central, is thrilled and honored to have the 12-court complex named after him.
He’s proud a local media organization dubbed it the “House Larry Built.”
But he’s even prouder of the program’s rich, successful history and a label many placed on the Trojans before they were a part of a conference and had to travel a long way to find suitable competition.
“We were independent for so many years from about ‘87 till maybe ‘97, and maybe even more than that,” Nykerk explained. “We were the ‘Notre Dame of the North’ in a lot of sports because we were independent and we were a dominant state, elite tennis power for all those years — on the girls side in particular.”
Central’s girls program is currently riding a streak of 43 years qualifying for the MHSAA Finals. The boys have qualified for the Finals 18 straight seasons.
The program’s current coaches are feeling a little bit of pressure to keep the streaks alive as they see Nykerk’s name every time they hit the home court.
During his tenure at Central, Nykerk won regional coach of the year honors 28 times, was named Michigan tennis coach of the year thrice (in 1984 and 2007 for boys tennis, and in 1997 for girls), and was shortlisted for national coach of the year in 2011.
“What am I most pleased with looking back at the accomplishments for what we did in the program is just the continuity of success,” Nykerk said. “It's not just one time with a good team, not just with the guys or just with the girls, but just the overall program that was up their top five, so many years.”
Nykerk coached the Trojans to 40 Regional championships. He had 13 players win individual Finals championships, and 65 players had 100 wins or more.
He retired once before returning to coach the Trojans. Today he’s a big supporter of the program and his successors — Casey Christensen on the boys side and Lisa Seymour on the girls.
“I would consider him our number one supporter,” said Christensen, now in his fourth year at the helm of the Trojans. “He comes to our matches and watches and supports the team. He put so much work into the entire process of the renovations of the courts. I don't think a lot of people realize that he has been a part of court renovations and sport promotion not only for our program specifically at Traverse City Central, but for the sport of tennis and the greater Traverse City area and statewide.”
Christensen stepped into the Trojans program after Shane Dilloway’s seven-year run coaching the boys and girls teams at Central. Dilloway was an assistant coach under Nykerk.
Today, Christensen is humbled to be a part of Trojan tennis.
“What a legacy to be able to have his name there and for us to be part of it but also to just be part of this greater story that goes so far beyond all of us,” Christensen said. “We’re competitive regionally, and at the state level and conference, but 18 years in a row of the state tournament? I don't know if there's a longer streak out there — there probably is — but it is a testament to our program’s consistency.”
Christensen is continuing Nykerk’s legacy and the boys program’s success. He guided the Trojans to a ninth-place finish at the Lower Peninsula Division 2 Final last fall.
“We graduated a lot a lot of experienced guys,” Christensen said. “And so the challenge for us this year has been re-tooling the roster with some first-year guys, but a lot of them are seniors. It's a challenge in that we only get them for a year and the season is so compact, but it's also an advantage because when you get older guys, that comes with emotional maturity and physical maturity, too, for sure.”
The Trojans do have six players back with high hopes of repeating last year’s first-place finish at the Regional. Alex Lamphier is now a senior and playing No. 1 singles. He won the Regional individual title at No. 2 in 2024.
Holden Berry, a doubles player last year, is now the Trojans’ No. 2 singles player. Also back are doubles partners Nate Brewer and Chris Girrbach and Helly Taylor and Oliver Christensen.
Strong competition early actually spoiled things a bit, handing the Trojans a few losses.
And while they have their newly-renovated courts named after Nykerk, they’re still traveling far to play the best competition they can.
“We're not afraid to go and play anyone,” Christensen said. “And we're kind of road warriors, man. We're on the road a lot. In order to do well in states, you need to play the Ann Arbors and the Midlands and Portage Northern.”
The Trojans traveled across town twice this week en route to their 22nd-straight Big North Conference championship. The event took place over two days due to weather conditions. Petoskey and Cadillac finished three and four points, respectively, behind the Trojans at the conference meet.
Taylor and Ollie Christensen led the way winning the No. 1 doubles crown. Brewer and Girrbach captured the No. 2 doubles title, and Brady Johnson and Henry Yonts came out on top in No. 4 doubles.
“Doubles play was great for us today, but our singles contributed too,” Christensen said moments after the 22nd-straight conference title. “We got points from every play, which is, I think that's ultimately what pushed us over the top.”
Lamphier and Berry helped secure the title with conference runner-up honors, both pushing their matches to 10-8 tie-breakers.
The Trojans now have their sights on the Division 2 Regional at the Midland Tennis Center. Midland Dow is the favorite the win the October Regional. Central expects to be in the mix for one of the other Finals-qualifying spots to keep the streak alive.
In addition to Big North foes Alpena and Traverse City West, the Regional will feature the host Midland Dow, Bay City Western, East Lansing, Flushing, Midland High and Mount Pleasant.
“East Lansing got added to our Regional and they’re historically pretty tough,” Christensen said. “Midland Dow is the cream of the crop, and the rest of us are just kind of playing catch up from there. It's going to be a dogfight for those second and third spots in the region to get automatically to states.”
And while the boys get the first chance to keep their streak alive, the girls are already feeling a little pressure to do the same in the spring.
Lisa Seymour, a former assistant coach under Nykerk at Central and varsity coach at West, heads up the girls program. She took over the Trojans girls in 2022.
And Seymour is thrilled the courts now bear Nykerk’s name.
“It just was such a natural thing for them to name the courts after him because they really are, you know, his courts,” she said. “Obviously he's a legend up in the Traverse City and Northern Michigan region. Even downstate, people and coaches knew him and some of the ones that are still coaching still do.”
The timing of naming the courts after Nykerk may add to the excitement this spring. The girls will be a young team after graduating 16 seniors last season.
“I don't want to say it's a pressure thing, but it's always in the back of your head — a lot of coaches don't ever experience getting to states,” Seymour said, noting the younger players did win the JV conference championship last year. “I don't want to call it a rebuilding year. We do have some really good foundational things in place.”
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Traverse City Central tennis players clear water from the Larry Nykerk Trojan Tennis Center courts this fall. (Middle) The facility was named after the longtime Central coach, who began coaching tennis at the school in 1968. (Below) A Trojans player sends back a volley. (Athlete photos by TC Rick Sports Photography. Nykerk photo courtesy of the Traverse City Central athletic department.)