Huntington North High School senior Carson Kitchen made his college choice official on Wednesday afternoon, signing with Huntington University to continue his academic and tennis careers as a Forester.
A four-year member of the Viking boys tennis team, Kitchen played a crucial role in his team’s success the last four seasons, guiding the Vikes to an overall record of 58–25 since his freshman campaign in 2018, highlighted by three consecutive sectional titles in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Individually, Kitchen, a Viking scholar athlete, earned three Northeast 8 Conference First Team Singles honors and three All-State Honorable Mention honors in addition to being on the Academic All-State list and being an Indiana All-Star in 2021, both of which being senior-only recognitions. Throughout his four years, Kitchen racked up an impressive 66–23 record.
“Carson is a natural leader who works hard and began to see the importance of team in an individual sport,” said Huntington North boys tennis head coach Peter Kitchen, Carson’s father. “He learned and then demonstrated how sometimes you had to sacrifice for yourself to make the team better for the ultimate team win and then setting goals as a team and then seeing those goals come full circle with three sectional titles and a near upset of Homestead in the first round of regional this past season. He helped make a ‘good’ team become a ‘great’ team.”
Of course, Peter, a 1995 graduate of then Huntington College and 2021 inductee in the Huntington University Athletics Hall of Fame, is excited for and proud of his son and his accomplishments and knows Carson has truly earned the opportunity to play tennis at the collegiate level.
“Not only as his high school coach, but more importantly as his father, I have gotten to see firsthand all the sacrifices he’s made to be his best, and the hard work paying off,” Peter said. “Since his 8th-grade year, he has put his mind to the goal of being able to play college tennis one day. Today he has met that goal.”
Carson plans to major in elementary education while at Huntington University with an endorsement in Spanish for EL students with the eventual goal of being a teacher.
Carson becomes the third Viking student-athlete to commit to Huntington University this school year, following Grace Dill (golf) and Maisy Robrock (volleyball) in signing with the Foresters.