Former Corner Canyon High School tennis player Alex Fuchs, who now plays for Ohio State, partnered with fellow freshman Buckeye teammate Brandon Carpico to win the Boys 18 & Under USTA National Doubles title in Orlando, Florida Aug. 25-27.

The duo, who received a USTA gold ball for the win, were playing in just their second tournament together. 

“It was fun playing doubles with him and was a great way to end our junior careers with a national championship,” said Fuchs, the son of Mark and Becky Fuchs of Draper. “We’re both pretty competitive, and I still think we have a long way to go to play even better as a team. We can communicate better, cover the court better, attack better and select better shots in the moment. It’s a never-ending process to become your best.”

Fuchs/Carpico didn’t drop a set in five matches and ultimately prevailed over Florida’s Jack Satterfield and Max Pettingell 7-6 (5), 6-4 in the final.

“We played two matches a day in hot and sticky weather so I sweated a lot and went through a bunch of extra shirts and sweat bands,” Fuchs said. “Luckily, it was doubles so it wasn’t as tough as singles.”

Fuchs, Utah’s 2023 Mr. High School Tennis who led the Chargers to the 6A championship in May while winning the No. 1 singles title, has been playing high-level tennis for the past few years. Most recently, he teamed up with now-UCLA freshman Emon van Loben Sels to win the National Indoor Doubles in Overland Park, Kansas last November and a pro tournament in Ojai, California this past spring.

Growing up in California, Alex Fuchs played soccer, basketball, Pop Warner football and high-level baseball. When he was 12, he won the home run derby at the Northern California Championships during the Little League World Series. “The trophy was as big as he was,” dad Mark Fuchs said.

It was a tough decision for Alex Fuchs to decide which sport he would eventually focus on, but he felt there was more action in tennis than baseball—“unless I was pitching, I really never worked up a sweat,” he said—and one view of the infamous 1985 NFL video of Lawrence Taylor’s hit that snapped Joe Theismann’s leg was enough to convince him that football may not be the one for him either. 

He began training with Steve Roberts in Florida and Joey Johnson in California to develop his racket skills and proper technique, and continued to travel back to California off and on following a move to Utah where he played his senior season at Corner Canyon.

The 18 year old started to get on the radar for colleges after making the final 16 at the 2022 Junior Nationals in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His commitment to play for perennial powerhouse Ohio State—and their legendary coach Ty Tucker—followed his older sister Elizabeth, who played tennis for Southern Virginia University, and his older brother Zach, who currently plays on the BYU men’s tennis team, into playing the sport at the next level.

“It was good to have an older sister and brother who played as I learned a lot from them,” Alex Fuchs said. “It’s been great to have parents who supported me and I was super lucky to work with some really excellent coaches who early on taught me and got me on the right path and have kept me on the right path.”

Mark Fuchs said he has watched the dedication it takes to become a college tennis player in all three of his children. “There’s no microwave tennis,” he said. “You have to put in the hard yards and develop an all-court game where you are a threat from anywhere on the court—with your serve, your groundstrokes and a net game.”

Alex Fuchs said his journey in tennis has been full of ups and downs, but he has been able to see parallels to life from lessons learned on the court. “Tennis is tough,” he said. “In practice and in competition you will suffer a lot. Tennis will kick your butt if you let it. I’ve had a lot of heartbreaking losses and tough injuries that have sidelined me. You have to deal with a lot of adversity and suffering. You just have to suck it up and get back up, but it’s only through that struggle that you can get better and stronger. And that struggle has also helped me be more appreciative of the sunshine when it occasionally peaks through the clouds.”

His dad, Mark, agrees. “You are on an island in tennis where it’s just you,” he said. “You have to figure things out in the ‘fog of war’ and still maintain your cool and composure while riding the ups and downs. It’s a long road with some wins and then lots of failures, but tennis really lets you know who you are and can reveal your true character in life as well.”

Now at Ohio State, Alex Fuchs said that the athletic preparation is on a different level. “Coach Tucker and the rest of the OSU coaching staff are putting me through insanely tough practices every day,” he said. “It’s crazy, but it will all help me become the best I can be. It’s the reason I chose to become a Buckeye.”λ