Country Day's Damian Runkle
and Blake Burstein.

No surprise to see so many local names all over the MHSTeCA's all-state teams, which were released today. Though this certainly does not make my job of picking an all-county team any easier.
As recent as two years ago, I chose an actual team (four singles players and four doubles teams) for first team all-county. I then upped that to eight singles players after realizing I would be omitting state champions from the mix. This county has just too much talent to limit honoring the best of the best.

It's going to be hard this season. There are nine first team all-state singles players - from Division 1 alone. Add to that Holly's Jeff Sophiea earning first team all-state honors in Division 2 (the first Broncho ever to be honored on the first team) and it makes things even more difficult.

Congratulations to Michael Dube', Jakob Gahn, Blake Hildebrand, Justin Hyman, Noah Karoub, Alex Kim, Oliver Li, Griffin Mertz, Josh Mukherjee, Rishi Patel, Kevin Rothstein, Marc Sable, Jeff Sophiea, Tim Wang and Richard Zhang, who all earned first team all-state honors in their divisions. Same goes to the county's best doubles teams, including Connor Parks and George Hamaty of Brother Rice, Dylan Deitch and Matt Meehan of Bloomfield Hills, Taylor Ghesquiere and Stephane Test of Cranbrook, Blake Burstein and Damian Runkle of Country Day, Michael Chang and Andrew Ying of Novi, Joey Hildebrand and David Weatherford of Brother Rice, Kenji Johnston and Griffin Neel of Seaholm, Colin Halow and Danny O'Neill of North Farmington, Rishabh Nayak and Adam Junn of Country Day and Chase Ghesquiere and Nolan Trepeck, all of which are first-team honorees.
CLICK HERE to see the complete listing of all-state teams.
And a special congratulations go out to Michael Dube' and Rishi Patel, both of whom were honored as Mr. Tennis candidates for their respective divisions. Both have accomplished a ton in high school and to be honored on such a distinguished list is a feather in each of their caps.
Stay tuned. I'm working on the all-county teams and will have them out as soon as I can.