MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Tight matches such as the one Tuesday make first-year Signal Mountain tennis coach John Mitchell wonder if he'll be able to make it to second-year coach John Mitchell.
His Eagles trailed by a point after the five singles matches against Merrol Hyde and had to make an injury substitution but won both doubles contests and moved on to Wednesday's Class Small state final with a 4-3 win at the Adams center.
Signal Mountain will face L&N STEM, a 4-0 winner over Trinity Christian.
In Division II-AA, McCallie advanced to its first state final since 2014 with a 4-0 win over Baylor. The Blue Tornado will face Montgomery Bell Academy as they search for their first title since 2009.
Will Leathers with Jordan Bruck and Charles Park with John Knight won to get McCallie the doubles point, and then the Leathers brothers - Hank and Will - and Knight claimed singles wins to clinch the team's third victory of the year against the rival Red Raiders.
"Baylor has a very good team and they played really well today," McCallie coach Jeff Clark said. "We rode out those moments when things weren't going well for us in certain sets, and we continued to play hard all the way through. There's heat, pressure, a lot of things very different from a regular-season match or a region match. To handle that well, I'm proud of the boys for following through from start to finish."
Signal split its first four singles matches and then Ryan Griggs started to cramp, ultimately having to be subbed out in doubles for Cooper Mastin. Griggs dropped the third set of his match, putting the Eagles behind 3-2, but Mastin and Jay Griggs teamed up for an 8-2 win to tie the score, and Gabe Williams and Zach Ottley rallied to win 9-8, 7-5 in the tiebreaker.
"I was confident in No. 1 doubles, but in No. 2 we had to put two guys that hadn't played a match this year together," Mitchell said. "Jay stepped up as a senior. I don't know how he did it, but he had composure and went out and played. Gabe played as good a match as I've ever seen him play; if it wasn't for him, we'd be going home right now.
"He's been the guy all year, and we wanted all the balls to come to him. As a coach it gave me more confidence, seeing his confidence out there."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.