2025 Times Boys Tennis Players of the Year: Ottawa’s Noah Gross and Evan Krafft

The first part of the 2025 season didn’t go precisely as planned for Ottawa junior Evan Krafft and senior Noah Gross.

However, the duo’s season finished pretty darn well.

Gross and Krafft are the 2025 Times Boys Tennis Players of the Year. Ottawa’s end-of-season No. 1 doubles team earned the honor after playing through injuries – Gross, to a shoulder; Krafft, to a bicep – in different spots in the lineup early in the spring, then teaming up late and hitting their stride to become the area’s last young men standing.

That culminated in a pair of victories at the State Finals Tournament in suburban Chicago and this honor.

“Putting them together at the end of the season, like a lot of times, it just sort of presented itself,” Ottawa boys tennis coach Matt Gross, Noah’s father, said. “I just need to pay attention to it, and that’s how it happened.

“It was great for both of them to make it, their second time qualifying for state. Once we put them together there at the end of the season, I felt pretty confident. ... I thought they picked each other up well. They communicated well, which was a big point of emphasis, to help each other out, pick each other up.”

Noah Gross and Krafft now are not only each two-time state qualifiers, but two-time Times Boys Tennis Players of the Year. As a sophomore, Krafft and then-senior Alan Sifuentes were Times Players of the Year in 2024. Noah Gross won the 2023 award his sophomore year alongside doubles partner and older brother Adam Gross.

Krafft and Noah Gross – despite coming together relatively late in the season – accomplished something neither of those duos did, bouncing back from a state-opening 7-6 (3), 3-6, (10-3) loss to score two victories before being eliminated in the third round of consolation play.

“Almost made it to Friday,” said Noah Gross, now graduated and planning to attend and play club tennis at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. “I was very happy with how we played. We lost, yeah, but we won two.”

According to coach Gross, it was as deep as a varsity Ottawa state qualifier had made it into the state finals in his almost quarter century of coaching. A big part of that was their on-court chemistry.

“I feel it’s a lot of mindset stuff,” Noah Gross said, “and if I get down, he’s not going to get down at the same time, and his doing well is going to lift me up, and vice versa.”

Krafft believes it was his partner’s perseverance and on-court savviness that made him such a strong complement to Krafft’s own game.

“It’s definitely a lot more fun playing with Noah rather than our other teammates or playing singles,” Krafft said. “Everybody’s fun to play with, but [Noah and I] just click on the court together. It’s always just better communication, chemistry, everything.

“We have our own strengths, and they’re different, and we’re able to put them to good use.”

For his part, Noah Gross said Krafft’s game complements his own due to his southpaw partner’s ability to get opposing players off-balance.

“In short, he’s a lefty, and lefties mess people up,” Krafft’s partner said. “His spin, his play messes [opponents] up and gives me opportunities to put it away at the net.”

For the Pirates coach, it was a doubles team that just made sense and obviously worked.

“I think they’re just both doubles players,” Coach Gross said. “Noah doesn’t want to play singles, and Evan would prefer not to play singles.

At the sectional seeding meeting, the question wasn’t, ‘Who are the best teams there for a seed?’ It’s, ‘Who’s the team you don’t want to play?’

“They were the answer to that question.”