Despite having a new head coach, the beat hasn’t stopped at Katy Taylor as far as tennis is concerned.

Three Taylor doubles teams are heading to the Lakeway World of Tennis in Austin for the 5A state tennis tournament Monday and Tuesday, and all three teams are looking like top contenders to win it all.

First-year coach Kirk Kniffen is pleased how his doubles teams performed at the Region III-5A meet, and hope they can carry that over to Austin.

“They competed real well,” Kniffen said. “They competed at key times and down here (at regionals), it’s any man’s game. You got to be the best competitor. Sometimes talent isn’t the real issue, it’s who can compete at a high level.”

One team who has competed real well is the team of Audrey Tompkins and Alex Henry, who looked really strong in regionals, only losing one set on their way to a girl’s doubles title. They will try to keep things going in the quarterfinals when the Mustang duo faces Klein’s Lauren Nielsen and Sydni Hermsdorf at 11:45 a.m. Monday.

Tompkins and Henry, who are 21-1 this season and finished third at state last year, dominated against a lot of the area’s top teams, and look to continue that level of play at state.

“I think they are, the way they’re playing right now,” Kniffen said. “They have played some of the top girl’s doubles teams in the state. They’ve played Austin Westlake and Lubbock Coronado, and I think they’re the favorite.”

Meanwhile, the boys duo of Tim Kuo and John Kim opens state play at 10:15 a.m. Monday against Russell Bader and Alex Durham of Austin Westlake.

At regionals, Kuo and Kim – who were seeded fourth – upset the top-seeded team from Clear Lake, Robert Voss and Chris Hoffman. But their biggest win came against the Cinco Ranch team of Sam Barnes and Alex Ishikawa, who had defeated the Taylor team twice this season.

“(Cinco) had so few unforced errors, and that really puts pressure on you when your opponent isn’t making any unforced errors,” Kniffen said. “That’s what we like to, is to let them make the unforced errors and us be the solid team. In that case, Cinco was the ones that were solid and we had to step it up.”

The mixed doubles team of Mia Matuszak and Neal Schneider will face Jared Hope and Whitney Wofford of Lubbock Cornonado in the state quarterfinals at 1 p.m. Monday.

Matuszak and Schneider lost to the top-seeded team, Amanda DiCarlo and Brandon Farine of Clear Lake, after dropping the last two sets. But the Mustang duo, who is 15-3 this season, isn’t looking back at their last match and is hoping that they can make a good run at state.

“That Lake team is tough. We had the right strategy to beat them, but we got a little tight near the end,” Kniffen said.

“There’s a lot of good mixed doubles teams at state. If they play well, they can do it. They lost in the second round last year, but they were the No. 1 team from regionals.”

The state quarterfinals in all divisions are Monday morning, with the semifinals later that afternoon. The state finals are scheduled to begin Tuesday morning.

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