Boys tennis: Carmel’s Malpeddi, McNamar win doubles title

The Carmel doubles team of Jones McNamar (second from left) and Srisanth Malpeddi (second from right) won the IHSAA doubles state championship Monday at Park Tudor. The duo is pictures with Greyhounds head coach Bryan Hanan (left) and assistant coach Josh Farley. (Richie Hall)

The Carmel doubles team of senior Jones McNamar and junior Srisanth Malpeddi won the IHSAA doubles tournament, which finished up Monday at Park Tudor.
The Greyhounds duo beat the Delta team of senior Brandon Jackson and junior Walker Boyle 6-0, 6-1. Malpeddi and McNamar finished their season with a 28-1 record, with their lone loss to Homestead in the regular season.
“It feels great,” said Malpeddi. He said that after the team took its loss to Homestead, “we were kind of down,” but Malpeddi and McNamar got back it and didn’t lose again for the remainder of the season.
“It’s great,” said McNamar, who said winning the doubles tournament was a “goal all season” for him and Malpeddi.
McNamar won the doubles tournament last year, partnering with now-graduate Uday Lomada. He thus became the first player to win back-to-back state doubles titles with different partners since North Central’s Joe Stimming won twice, in 1990 and 1991.
“We haven’t really played together before, so we were struggling at the beginning,” said McNamar of this season’s partnership. “But as the season went on, we just started to click really well and we started playing a lot better, as good as we were capable of.”
This is the eighth time that Carmel has won a doubles state title, and marked the fifth year in a row that the Greyhounds won both the team state title and either a singles or doubles championship.