COLUMBIA — Sebastien Cousineau made history last week when he became the first Kent County High School tennis player to reach a final in the state tournament.
The 16-year-old sophomore lost in straight sets to Boonsboro senior Hunter Liao, who also would make history as the state’s first four-time boys singles champion.
It was a mismatch that we believe Cousineau would acknowledge as Liao, who has committed to NCAA Division III Massachusetts Institute of Technology to play tennis, finished 17-0 this season and 68-0 in his career — without ever losing a set.
In his four state finals, Liao won 48 of 51 games.
He defeated Cousineau, 0 and 0.
“I think that in the final I definitely didn’t play to the best of my ability,” Cousineau told The Evening Enterprise about the May 24 state championship match at the Wilde Lake Tennis Club courts.
“My opponent didn’t give me much,” he said matter-of-factly. “I had a few winners, but other than that it was pretty rough.”
The Trojans’ two-time team MVP, Cousineau finished 13-2 this spring.
His only other loss came early in the season to Easton’s Jake Hershey, who placed third in Class 2A singles.
After the loss to Hershey on April 9, Cousineau won 11 matches in a row in the run-up to the state 1A final. This included two wins in the East Region I tournament followed by quarterfinal- and semifinal-round victories at the state tournament last week.
Cousineau advanced with straight-set victories on May 23 over Liberty’s Jayden Venable, 6-2, 6-4, and Pikesville’s Brennan Steward, 6-0, 6-3.
Cousineau said what worked well for him in these two matches was his “offense.”
“I overpowered both opponents. Neither of them were able to counter the pace and spin that I could attack them with,” he told The Evening Enterprise in a text message.
After the region tournament on May 10, Cousineau said he put a lot of time in “trying my best to get my serve as consistent as possible so that I’d be able to rely on it at states.”
Reflecting on his KCHS milestone, Cousineau said, “I feel really proud to be the first boy or girl to ever reach the state finals for Kent County tennis, and I’m excited to have two years to do even more.”
As a state runner-up, Cousineau eclipses the mixed doubles duo of seniors Megan Bramble and Derek Schreiber who placed third in the state in 1997.
That was a generation ago, and a very different era in Maryland high school tennis. Back then there was no breakdown in division based on school enrollment. Most often, the state champs were from the largest schools.
Since 2019, the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association has used a tennis championship classification based on school enrollment. Specifically, the classification uses enrollment numbers from grades 9, 10 and 11 as of Sept. 30 of even-numbered years.
Cousineau is the first KCHS boys singles player to win a first-round match in the state tournament since Ryan Santmyer, a three-time region champ, did it as a senior in 2018. And before that it was Kenny Fenner, a four-time district champion, who won his first-round match in 1982.
In the 2018 state tournament, Santmyer, from tiny KCHS, was sent out against players from much larger schools — Class 4A Northwestern (Prince George’s) and Whitman (Montgomery). He defeated his opponent from Northwestern, an exchange student from Germany, 6-0, 6-2, but lost in the next round to his opponent from Whitman, a Division I Texas commit, who went on to finish fourth in the state.
All the state champions that year — in boys and girls singles, boys and girls doubles, and mixed doubles — were from Class 4A schools.
The girls doubles team from 1A Patterson Mill in Harford County was the only finalist that was not from a 4A school.
Santmyer had a hall of fame-caliber high school career as a four-time Mid-Shore Player of the Year. He finished 75-5, and was unbeaten in dual matches in all four years. Four of his losses were at the state tournament; the other loss was as a freshman in the 2015 Region VIII final.
A scholar-athlete and the outstanding male sportsman in the KCHS Class of 2018, Santmyer went on to play for Salisbury University where he graduated in three years. He is now a Delaware state trooper.
