Caroline and Chloe Hocker beat Topeka Seaman's Camryn Lux and Cadence Speer 6-0, 6-1 on Saturday, Oct. 17, to claim the Class 5A girls doubles state tennis title at Andover District Tennis Complex.
The championship marked their final high school match together. The sisters told the Eagle they do not plan to pursue competitive tennis in college.
The dominant win capped a 32-3 season and gave Kapaun its first doubles state title since Kelly House and Eleanor Baldwin won it in 2017, according to the Wichita Eagle.
The Hockers entered the Class 5A state tournament as the No. 1 doubles seed. But their path to the championship wasn't purely about talent. Three early-season losses weighed on the sisters, who put enormous pressure on themselves to play a perfect senior year.
"When you play like you have to win, you play not to lose," Chloe Hocker told the Eagle. "And when you play not to lose, it's just hard to hit good shots and hit like you know how."
Kapaun coach Kathy Schulte, who has coached the twins since sixth grade, said she spent the season reminding them that mistakes were part of the game. As the sisters stopped dwelling on errors and started enjoying themselves again, their best tennis emerged.
The results at state showed it.
The Hockers won 48 of 54 games across two days of competition. They dropped just two games Friday to reach the semifinals, then surrendered four more Saturday while winning the championship.
Their on-court chemistry stood out. The Eagle reported that the Hockers routinely swap positions without a word, one sister moving while the other instinctively covers the opening. An opponent asked during the tournament whether the twins had some kind of telepathy. Schulte called them "just such a fluid team," saying each sister knows where to cover without hesitation.
The championship highlighted a strong weekend for Kapaun overall. The Crusaders earned the third-place team trophy in Class 5A. Senior Julia Judkins finished seventh in singles, and freshman Maddy Youssef placed 11th. All four Kapaun entries qualified for state, including the doubles team of senior Adalyn Johnson and freshman Brooklyn Allen.
For Schulte, the tournament marked the end of a six-year coaching relationship with the Hockers and Judkins, whom she has coached since they were in sixth grade.
As the team packed up Saturday, the twins' father, Jacob Hocker, joked that Schulte would have to find another team dad to set up the tent at tournaments. He had handled the job for seven years, dating back to when his oldest daughter, Clara, began competing for Schulte.
