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Friends sign to play tennis at Barton
By Randy Fisher
Last Updated: February 12, 2015

When Triston Herbst and Ray Strunk went out for tennis as freshmen, they were casual players, at best. They made an impression on Valley Center High School tennis coach Dean Schulz.

"As freshmen, they came in with really big egos," Schulz said. "They kept saying they were going to make varsity and we just thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure, maybe.'"

If you listen to Herbst, it sounds like he went out because he was bored.

"As a freshman, I just did it to kind of get out there and do something," he said. "I did not think at all I was going to be playing in college. Didn't even think about it, actually, until last year. And here I am."

"Here" was the Valley Center High School library where he and Strunk signed Feb. 5 to play tennis next year at Barton Community College.

So what turned their high school tennis careers around? Old-fashioned hard work. They liked the sport enough to commit to practicing and working hard in the off-season.

"After … just messing around, having a good time, we decided to take it seriously," Strunk said. "Over the summer, we spent just about every day on the courts, hitting constantly until we worked up to having some skill."

Then it was time to impress Schulz again.

"They … came back in as sophomores, showed great improvement and played a little bit of varsity," he said. "They did the same for their junior year and they were solid varsity players at that time."

Even their parents noticed.

"I know that he just decided as a freshman to start playing," said Triston's mother, Tracy Edwards. "After his freshman year, he realized he loved it, and it's just kind of taken off since then."

"I think it's just his love of all sports," said Ray's mother, Lisa Strunk. "He found something he was good at and decided he was going to be as good as he could be at it."

Both boys liked what they saw when they visited Barton: the campus, a nationally ranked team and Great Bend. But moms being moms, they liked other things.

"It was small enough I felt comfortable as a mom for him to be there," Edwards said. "It was different enough that I'm excited for the opportunity and the experience he can have while living there and going to school."

"It's perfect," Lisa Strunk said. "It's far enough from home he can't run home every time something goes wrong, but he can get here if he needs to."






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