Lakeside tennis coach Donnie Burch described his teams' emotions as "strange."

After the Panthers' losses to Marist in the Georgia High School Association Class AAAA state tennis championships Friday at Clayton County International Park, the atmosphere surrounding his squad was upbeat.

"Ironically, we weren't disappointed at all. When we came off the court, we came off knowing we threw everything we had at them," Burch said.

"We didn't let them win. We played solid. We just got beat by a good tennis team."

The Lakeside squads dropped both matches to the War Eagles, 3-0, in the best-of-five format.

Marist, a private school in Atlanta, came in ranked No. 1 in the boys and girls polls.

In Class AAAAA, Greenbrier's girls team lost 3-0 to Centennial in the state championship.

The loss was the first of the season for Greenbrier, which finished 16-1.

In Lakeside's boys match, Zak Mason, of Marist, beat Clayton Grice, 6-3 6-3. Hunter Anderson topped Andrew Dromsky, 6-3 6-1, and the Marist doubles team of Matthew Colonnese and Brian Krouskos knocked off Mitchell Hoff and Austin Coleman, 6-1, 6-3, to clinch the state title.

The Panthers stand to gain valuable experience from their trip to the finals. They are losing only a few seniors to graduation, potentially setting up another deep playoff run.

"It was a nice building year," Burch said. "It will be a nice springboard for us."

In girls play, Greenbrier's top two singles players, Blair LaSure and Katie Krupp, lost their matches to Centennial's Alison Blaire and Megan Kurey, two of the top players in the state. The score was 6-0, 6-4 in both matches.

First-year coach Brittany Jack-son said she was impressed by the Wolfpack's performance against the top competition.

"Their two top girls are really good, ranked really high in the state. The score doesn't reflect how they (LaSure and Krupp) played," Jackson said.

The Wolfpack, who reached the title match with seven freshmen on their roster, hope to build on their playoff run.

"We have a really young team," Jackson said. "We felt like we were the underdog, but we played awesome against this team. So it wasn't a sad time for us. We were really excited about what we accomplished."