Getting to Austin in November is starting to become a regular habit for the Boerne Champion tennis team.

For the second year in a row, the Chargers have qualified for the 4A state tournament to be held this Friday and Saturday in Austin after they defeated Alamo Heights late Saturday afternoon 10-7 for the Region IV-4A title.

The Chargers will play Highland Park Friday at 1 p.m. in the state semifinals at Lakeway World of Tennis. Wichita Falls and Montgomery will play in the other semifinals with the two winners playing Saturday at 9 a.m. for the state title.

Champion tennis coach Joey Cantu said this year’s trip to Austin was a little harder compared to last season since they are such a young team.

“I told them they had to earn their way to the state tournament this year, it wasn’t going to be an easy task,” he said. “We had a challenge being so young and there were a lot of things going on, but people stepped up into roles they hadn’t been in before and met those challenges.”

The Chargers had defeated Alamo Heights twice this year rather handily, once in the regular season and another time at the district tournament, but Cantu said he knew beating the Mules a third time would be tougher for several reasons.

First, the Mules were returning two quality players who had been out with injuries and secondly, the Alamo Heights coach juggled the lineup a bit in order to get better match ups for his players.

“I knew those players were going to come back, but my biggest worry was where they were going to get put,” he said. “He gave them their best shot to beat us and they had an opportunity to beat us.”

The Mules made their move late in the day in singles play. Champion was ahead 8-2 at one point, but the Mules closed the gap at 8-6 after winning four straight. From there it was 9-7 with three matches on the court before Briana Fellows gave the Chargers the 10th win to advance to state.

Cantu said it was the team’s doubles play that was the difference.

“Being up 5-2 after doubles was what clinched it for us,” he said. “We jumped out to that big lead, if it had been 4-3 coming out of singles we might have been in trouble.”

Fellows has been Johnny-on-the-spot for Champion in its last three matches, clinching the 10th win at district, in the regional semis against Lake Travis Saturday and doing it again later that day in the regional finals.

“She’s in the right spot for us at No. 5 singles, but there were nine other wins before that,” Cantu said.

Highland Park is the No. 1 seed and brings an undefeated record into the tournament, but Cantu said his team would give it everything they have and not be intimidated by the Scots who have made 22 straight state tournament appearances since 1988 and won 10 state championships during that time.”

“Some of our kids have a bad taste in their mouth from last year and we’re going in knowing we have an opportunity to play with any of these teams,” said Cantu whose team lost to Highland Park in the state finals last year to come back with silver medals. “We have young kids that don’t understand what Highland Park has done and that may work to our advantage since they don’t know anything about them.”

Tournament Notes: Boerne Champion defeated Edcouch-Elsa in the first round of regionals 10-0 and then knocked off Calallen 10-1. In the semifinals they beat Lake Travis 10-6 before taming the Mules 10-7.