MIDDLETOWN — When his match had finally ended, Andy Zhu laid down on the court at St. Andrew’s School and put his hands over his face. Part of that was likely to block the bright sunshine, but also as a sign of relief.
Zhu, a senior at Archmere Academy, battled Wilmington Charter freshman Ryan He, the heat and a heaping of internal pressure to win the boys’ first singles at the DIAA tennis championships on May 23. It was his fourth individual title as he joined one of the rarest clubs in Delaware scholastic sports.
The magnitude of the achievement wasn’t lost on Zhu.
“That means the world to me,” he said. “I’ve been working more than four years to get to this spot. It’s been up and down at some points, but I’m just so glad. It’s probably the biggest accomplishment I’ve done in my life.”
Zhu had never faced He before this season, but when they met on May 3, Zhu won, 6-0, 6-2. He made the championship win a lot tougher. The match, though it ended in straight sets, was full of long rallies in much hotter temperatures. And there was the pressure Zhu said he was feeling trying to become a four-time champ.
“This year was the most pressure out of all four of the years. I was nervous warming up over there. I was tight. My serve wasn’t feeling good today. But I was able to pull through,” he said.
He will continue his tennis career at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and would like to keep the sport as a focal point of his life. He will graduate from Archmere on June 2 with a lot of gratitude for the people and experiences he had there.
“I don’t think I could have done this accomplishment going anywhere else,” Zhu said. “All these people here from Archmere, they came out to support me. The fans were awesome. I couldn’t have done this without the Archmere community.”
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