For Tumwater’s Gentry, high school tennis is a formality

His tennis past is well documented: back-to-back Class 2A state championships, one in 2014 for Capital High and the other this past spring for Tumwater High.

For Ty Gentry, a Thunderbirds senior, it’s more meaningful to look to his tennis future — even if that means, most immediately, another meaningless fall tennis season.

“He doesn’t need high school tennis,” said Jim Click, his coach at Tumwater.

Gentry agrees with his coach, at least in competitive terms. He’s widely acknowledged as the best junior player in the region, and he doesn’t expect to be seriously tested by any high school opponent this fall.

But he’s happy, he says, to be playing tennis with his buds on the T-Birds team while looking ahead to the state tournament next spring, a chance at a third state title — and beyond.

It’s all part of the plan.

“My ultimate goal is to play pro,” Gentry said. “Most definitely.”

He’s made a firm verbal commitment to play tennis at the University of Oregon and will make his official visit to Eugene this weekend.

Oregon coaches have already put Gentry on a training plan, a regime that runs through the winter months when the 6-foot-5 Gentry plays point guard on the Tumwater basketball team.

“We’re mapping out a schedule when I can play tournaments,” he said. “They want to make sure I stay on the right track.”

Gentry chose Oregon, he said, for its pro-style approach to training tennis players.

“They coach like professionals play,” he said. “It’s more intense and more technical, just more like an organized system. They’ve put out pro players before.”

What the Ducks team will get in Gentry, Click said, is the best player he’s seen in his 23 years coaching at Tumwater.

“He’s got all the shots, plus he’s got utility shots he can pull out when he needs them,” Click said. “He’s got great hands, a beautiful drop shot.”

The long-armed Gentry has mastered three different serves, Click said — a flat serve, clocked at a pro-caliber 132 mph at Gentry’s training center, Northwest High Performance Tennis in Bellevue; a slice serve; and a kick or topspin serve.

Gentry doesn’t play in every match for Tumwater, but he did play against one local team that had a “pretty good singles player” who thought he could win a game off Gentry, Click said. The guy almost pulled it off, leading game-point at 40-15 before Gentry stiffened, came back and won that game and then the match, 6-0, 6-0.

“He just said, ‘No,’ ” Click said. “When you say ‘pretty good singles player,’ Ty’s just at a different level.”

When Gentry doesn’t play, Jordan Gibson, a senior transfer from Arizona, moves up to play No. 1 singles. Sophomore Carl Myers is solid at No. 3 singles, or No. 2 when Gentry doesn’t play.

The No. 1 doubles team of seniors Devin Reich and Cole Holbrook placed third in the district tournament last year and progressed to state. The duo has not lost this fall, contributing to four T-Bird team wins in 2A Evergreen matches against Black Hills, Eatonville, W.F. West and Centralia.

While he might be head and shoulders above his T-Bird mates, Gentry is definitely on the team. He enjoys demonstrating and teaching different shots at practice.

“I have a lot of friends on the team,” Gentry said. “It makes it more fun.”

This year, Click said, Gentry has “become a kid that enjoys helping other kids. He’s not shy about sharing his knowledge. That says a lot about his character.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 9:47 PM with the headline "For Tumwater’s Gentry, high school tennis is a formality."