CENTRAL NEW YORK – Moving the calendar to October means that, for area high school girls tennis teams, it’s time for the various post-season tournaments that culminate at the end of the month with the awarding of state championships.
It begins with the Section III team tournaments, where in Class A unbeaten Fayetteville-Manlius again holds the top seed and, in one quarterfinal, no. 4 seed Christian Brothers Academy is challenged by East Syracuse Minoa, the no. 5 seed.
F-M had little trouble defeating Liverpool 6-1 last Wednesday, seeing the doubles teams of Sadie Toole-Lindsey Chong, Selena Chen-Shreya Bhattacharya, Angelina Fang-Caitlyn McLain and Anohki Dalal-Mariah Sun drop just six games in eight total sets.
Up in singles, though Trisha Adavikolanu lost 6-4, 6-1 to Angelica Underwood, Samreen Mangat roared past Angela Morgans 6-1, 6-0, with Erin McLain shutting out Kamry Scanna 6-0, 6-0.
Then F-M blanked Henninger 7-0 on Thursday with shutouts in five of the seven matches and did drop a set beating West Genesee by that same margin on Friday to complete a 10-0 regular season.
CBA was still undefeated thanks to a key 5-2 win over then-unbeaten Westhill on Sept. 20 and kept it up, blasting past Phoenix 7-0 last Monday, with Allie Mancini and Claire Schaefer getting shutouts in singles as Rowan Doyle won 6-2, 6-0 over Finley Harwood.
Three of the doubles matches were also won in two sets, the lone exception a spirited late comeback by Claire Ash and Sadie Wichmann as they went through two tiebreaks and got a 2-6, 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (10-7) win against Isabelle Hillman and Emily St. Laurent.
Blanking Chittenango 7-0 a day later involved winning a series of single-set matches to 10 games. Zdep and Gianna Moore beat Olivia Skoglund and Anna Chatwin 10-5 in the tightest doubles match while, in singles, Schaefer won and so did Claire Schaefer, who rolled past Evelynn Keville 10-2.
All this followed the Westhill match where Doyle and Schaefer won in singles and the key doubles win was attained when Julie Zdep and Madison Evans rallied past Megan Battista and Emily Baludzzi 6-7, 6-2, 10-7.
ESM prevailed again last Monday, topping Nottingham 6-1. The Spartans went 2-1 in singles, including Brooke Kirkpatrick blanking Layla Forbes 6-0, 6-0 and Erin Murnane handling Hsay Htoo 6-1, 6-2.
Over in doubles, the teams of Sophie Jones-Caroline Sitnik, Gianna Brilbeck-Katelyn Davis, Abigail Cain-Ososenso Ikhide and Jewelianna Hallock-Lila O’Brien dropped just four games in eight total sets.
Battling past Oswego 4-3 two days later, ESM had straight-set doubles wins from Brilbeck-Davis, Cain-Ikhide and Hallock-O’Brien, but the clinching point came when Kirkpatrick overcame a first-set defeat to put away Anna Michalski 5-7, 6-0, 6-4.
By that same 4-3 margin, ESM fell to Central Square on Friday, which is exactly what happened to Jamesville-DeWitt earlier in the week.
With singles sweeps by Mona Farah and Olivia Quackenbush, plus a doubles win from Kendall Cabiles and Clara Hasegawa, J-D just needed one more point.
Yana Farah found herself down a set and facing a tiebreak against Paige Westfall in second singles. Farah won that tiebreak and was tied in the final set, but Westfall broke serve again and pulled it out 6-2, 6-7 (7-5), 6-4.
During Wednesday’s 6-1 victory over Nottingham, J-D got singles shutouts from Olivia Clark and Mona Farah, with all the doubles matches won in two sets, the closest of them Hasegawa and Jaeda Robinson beating Azmira Suljic and Hsay Wah 6-1, 6-4.
Eventually J-D earned the no. 7 seed in the Class B sectional tournament and, in a first-round match against no. 10 seed Chittenango, did just enough to get past the Bears 4-3.
Mona Farah rolled in singles as Clark beat Evelyn Keville 6-4, 7-6 and, in doubles, Kendall Cabiles and Clara Hasegawa got a 7-5, 6-2 win over Lynne Devine and Sophia Turner.
However, the Bears captured two doubles points and added a third when Quackenbush and Yara Farah lost in three sets to Molly Douglas and Allie Bartoszek 6-1, 5-7, 6-3.
So it was up to Ella Arzia, in third singles, to rally from an early deficit and take out Lia Ezzo 4-6, 6-0, 7-5, enough to push J-D into a quarterfinal Monday against no. 2 seed Whitesboro as Manlius Pebble Hill, the no. 6 seed in Class C, meets no. 3 seed Westmoreland.
