Shady Spring – During Joan Cooper’s three years as the tennis coach at Liberty, she’s never had a male player qualify for the state tournament.

Andrew Ellis has broken that streak.

The Liberty senior avenged an earlier loss to Wyoming East’s Aaron Jarrell, upsetting the No. 4 seed in Tuesday’s Region 3 final 9-7 at Shady Spring to advance to the state tournament in Charleston as a singles player next week.

Ellis came into the regional unranked and suffered an 8-3 loss to Jarrell earlier this season, but the upset didn’t come as a surprise to Cooper.

“He’s just a fantastic athlete,” Cooper said. “He’s probably the most athletic player I have. He’s played four years of football, he did wrestling and he does tennis. He just worked really hard this week and worked on his serves and returns. It worked because he came out really strong.”

Part of Ellis’ success Tuesday came from his ability to keep Jarrell off balance.

The senior changed his approach, consistently attacking the weak points.

“He kept changing up his hits,” Cooper said. “He would put some heat on some and back off on others. He also ran him a little bit and it worked.”

Afterwards, Ellis was emotional seeing all the hard work pay off.

“He’s just one of those athletes that’s really committed to whatever sport he’s playing at the time,” Cooper said. “He weightlifts all year long for football and puts his heart into it. Like we said, he came in as the underdog and didn’t know how it would turn out but he had a great day. I’m just super proud of him.”

The Raiders didn’t have to wait long to send their second male player to states as Jackson Trump beat Westside’s Elijah Ellis 9-7 in their singles match to earn his ticket to Charleston.

Trump was the No. 4 seed while Ellis was the No. 3 seed.

Ellis and Trump both advance to next week’s state tournament in Kanawha City. The tournament will start on June 3 and run through June 5.