With a perfect regular season and Section III Class C tournament championship already in the books, the Skaneateles girls tennis team went after more honors in the sectional Division III singles and doubles tournaments – and got a doubles title from Makenzi Herbst and Grace Magee.
When play started last Tuesday at Mott Courts in Utica following a 24-hour rain postponement, Herbst and Magee firmly backed up their top seed.
In the round of 16, Herbst and Magee roared past Morgan Conroy and Emma Stanton (Jordan-Elbridge) 6-1, 6-0, and won by those same scores in the quarterfinals over the Marcellus duo of Rebekah Mullins and Genevieve Rao.
The semifinal match against Elisabeth Roberts and Austin Stevens (South Jefferson) took a bit longer, but Herbst and Magee won 6-3, 6-3, to set up a final against the no. 2 seed from Marcellus, Grace Hunt and Mary Kate McHale, with whom they split a pair of regular-season matches.
But the title match, played Thursday at Liverpool High School, proved a one-sided affair. Herbst and Magee blanked Hunt and McHale 6-0 in the first set, and while they tailed off a bit in the second set, the Lakers duo still won it 6-2 to earn the sectional championship without dropping a single set in the entire tournament.
Up in singles, the final between top seed Katelyn Ellison and the no. 2 seed from Marcellus, Haley Randall, was also a rematch of two regular-season matches that were split.
Just to get there, Ellison breezed through a pair of preliminaries, routing Shannon Cherpak (Clinton) 6-0, 6-1 in the quarterfinals and cruising past Vernon-Verona-Sherrill’s Kelly Breckenridge 6-2, 6-2 in the semifinals.
Randall had also won each of her earlier matches in straight sets – and would get to Ellison in the final at Liverpool, too, earning a 6-3 victory in the first set and putting away Ellison 6-4 in the second set as Randall, winner of more than 50 career matches, took the title.
Angela Krause had lost to Randall 6-1, 6-0 in one quarterfinal, with Olivia Gage falling to Mexico’s Kristen Albright 6-4, 6-4 in the other quarterfinal after Gage won her opening-round match over another Marcellus player, Megan Charles, 6-0, 6-3.
Liz Belinski and Alaina Davis won in the first round over Emily Malone and Hannah Peebles (General Brown) 6-2, 6-1, but ran into Hunt and McHale in the quarterfinals, getting it to three sets, but then watching the Marcellus pair dominate down the stretch in a 6-3, 4-6, 6-0 decision.
Maura McNeil and Maddy Pinkney never got out of the opening round, as Cazenovia’s duo of Edie and Lucy Connor, who went on to a semifinal appearance, prevailed in their match 6-1, 6-2.
When it all was wrapped up, Herbst, Magee and Ellison were making their way to the Section III state qualifier, as 16 singles and 16 doubles team vied for three spots apiece in the Nov. 2-4 state tournament at Tri-City Tennis Center in Latham, near Albany.
They started the qualifier Saturday, at Syracuse University’s Skytop Courts, where Ellison won in the opening round over Manlius-Pebble Hill’s Elizabeth Clarkson 7-5, 6-3, only to run into Auburn’s Julia Wagner in the quarterfinals and lose a 6-3, 6-2 decision.
As for Herbst and Magee, they could not make it out of the first round, running into West Genesee’s team of Taylor Ginestro and Kayla Llanos, who prevailed by the same 6-3, 6-2 margin that Wagner did over Ellison.
