Demopolis High School’s boys and girls tennis teams competed in the Class 5A state tournament late last week.

The Lady Tigers finished 10th out of 12 teams and the boys team finished 11th out of 12.

Head coach Clay Massey said the season was successful for both the boys and girls teams.

“You go down there, and unless you win, you want to have done better, but it was far from a failure,” he said. “Both teams worked extremely hard all season and met their goals of making it to state.”

On the boys side, Carson Parten, Demopolis No. 2 seed, was the only player to make it out of the first round of the tournament. He defeated Chris Cunningham from Benjamin Russell High School in three sets (5-7, 6-2, 6-2). In the second round, Parten lost in two sets (6-2, 6-0) to Cullman High School’s Baylor Adams. Adams went on to win the No. 2 seed bracket.

For the girls, Sarah Culpepper, Kate Floyd and the doubles team of Floyd and Mary Frances Brown advanced out of the first round.

Culpepper defeated Lindsay Langford from Benjamin Russell in three sets (7-5, 3-6, 6-4). She fell to Ann Mason Hunter from St. Paul’s, who was the state runner up in the girls No. 2 seed bracket.

Floyd, the No. 5 seed for Demopolis, beat Sydney Knight in two sets (6-1, 6-2) to advance to the second round. She lost to Kateleigh Calloway from Briarwood in two sets (6-0, 6-2). Calloway lost in the championship match to finish as the runner up.

Brown and Floyd beat the team of Shelby Smith and Knight from Valley in two sets (6-0, 6-0) before falling in two sets to the team of Brooke Baird and Aubrey Forbus from Benjamin Russell (6-3, 6-3).

“Both teams improved so much from the beginning of the season, and that’s what you want,” Massey said.

Neither the boys nor the girls team will lose any players to graduation, and Massey said he hopes to bring everybody back for next season.

“We’ll be in a completely new section next year, so that will present its own challenges, but this group has come a long way, and I think we can be even better next season if we work hard over the summer,” he said.

St. Paul’s won both the boys and girls state championships last week.