Area tennis players who played on Thursday at the state tennis tournament at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason were (from left) East Liverpool's doubles team of Garrett Cooper and Brady Dawson along with Heartland Christian's Cooper Grim. (Heartland Christian School)

MASON — Heartland Christian’s Cooper Grim is two wins away from a state title.

The highly ranked junior won his first two matches on Thursday to advance to the Div. II state semifinals at the Lindner Family Tennis Center.

In the first round, the East Palestine resident knocked off Cincinnati Summit Country Day senior Tyler Lammers 6-1, 6-1. Lammers is ranked as the 19th best senior in the state of Ohio.

Grim then picked up his first state quarterfinal win of his career with a 7-6, 6-0 win over Columbus Bexley senior Amiya Bowles. Bowles, a three-time state singles girls champion, was playing in the boys tournament this season for a different challenge. Bowles is the No. 1 ranked girl in her class in Ohio and is committed to Michigan State.

In his previous two trips to the state tournament, Grim, the 205th best junior in the country as ranked by the Tennis Recruiting Network, had lost in the quarterfinal round.

Grim, also ranked as the seventh best junior in Ohio, will meet Pepper Pike Orange junior Ilya Shcherbakov in today’s semifinal.

Grim had beaten Shcherbakov 7-5, 6-0 in a district semifinal on Saturday and the two are in the same tennis clinic at the Cleveland Racquet Club. Shcherbakov, ranked as the 144th best junior in the national and sixth best junior in Ohio, arrived at the state semifinal by beating Zanesville sophomore Subh Patel 6-0, 6-0 and Toledo Ottawa Hills freshman Henrique Marson 6-2, 6-0.

Poland senior Andrew Aey, who is close friends with Grim, lost his first round match to Kettering Bishop Alter sophomore Michael Shope 6-4, 6-2. In the second round, Shope lost 6-2, 7-6 to the top freshman in the state in Bexley’s Harrison Lessard. Lessard will meet Milton Union junior Sebastian MacDonald in the other semifinal. Brumbaugh is ranked as the ninth best junior in Ohio.

The semifinals will begin at 9 a.m. The championship match and third-place matches will follow.

In doubles play, East Liverpool senior Brady Dawson and sophomore Garrett Cooper were eliminated in the first round by Dayton Oakwood’s Oren Watson and Ronin Boehne, 6-0, 6-2. The Oakwood team then lost to Northeast district champion Joseph DeMata-Hiciano and Zayd Adi of Pepper Pike Orange 6-0, 6-1 in the quarterfinal.

Adi and DeMata-Hiciano will meet Cincinnati Indian Hill’s Neelan Gandhi and Gareth Kurowski in one semifinal. In the other, Henry Lessard and Adrian Schiff of Columbus Bexley will meet Pepper Pike’s Sam Tokmazeysky and Atreya Bhatt. Henry Lessard is the brother of Harrison Lessard and is ranked as the top junior in Ohio.