Mercer Island coach Ryan Pang knew the Islanders’ KingCo finale against Bellevue would be close, with Bellevue holding an edge in singles competition while he felt the Islanders were better in doubles. Last Thursday, that was exactly how the match played out.

Bellevue won out in singles competition to edge the Islanders 4-3 Oct. 16 at Mercer Island High School. The win gave Bellevue KingCo’s top spot heading into the KingCo tournament. It was Mercer Island’s first loss of the season.

“Bellevue singles, they’re so good and play at such a high level, they just forced our guys to make more mistakes than they normally make,” Pang said in a phone call. “You don’t see that the first seven weeks, they got so flustered. I think it shell-shocked them.”

Bellevue’s Hunter Egger defeated Brian Hou 6-1, 6-4, while Daniel Foster won over Jake Bethards 6-1, 6-2 and Zach Fleischman beat Cameron Coe 6-2, 6-1. Mercer Island’s Charlie Williams won his first set against Theo McDonald 6-7(7-9), before McDonald took the second 6-2 and led 3-0 in the third when Williams had to retire injured.

Mercer Island swept doubles competition, with Peter Williams and Ben Elliott beating Eddie Locke and Kyto Akagi 6-1, 6-2, Rafa Gonzalez-Posada and Christian Anderson defeating Michael Zhao and Dexter Chen  6-2, 6-3 and Jarod Wong and Stuart Toda winning over Peter Hwang and Eric Chen 6-0, 6-1.

Looking back, Pang said he might’ve changed the lineup around more if he could’ve predicted how dominant the Islanders played in their doubles matches, but that wouldn’t guarantee singles wins.

“[The Wolverines] were just better than us,” he said. “What would’ve helped is if we played Newport more,” alluding to Mercer Island’s match earlier in the week that was rained out.

Mercer Island competed in the 3A KingCo boys tennis tournament, which took place after the Reporter deadline, Oct. 20-21 at Skyline.