Fayetteville-Manlius and Jamesville-DeWitt have both placed top girls tennis players on the Section III teams heading to next weekend’s state championship tournament.
The Hornets’ doubles team of Laurin Goldberg and Sienna Susko emerged victorious from the the Section III state qualifier Wednesday at Drumlins, while the Red Rams’ Pollock took third place in singles.
Play in the qualifier began on Oct. 19 at Syracuse University’s Skytop Courts, where Goldberg and Susko, the top seed in doubles, routed Alyssa Bowers and Gabrielle Duell (Westmoreland) 6-0, 6-1 in the opening round and then swept Edie and Lucy Connor (Cazenovia) 6-0, 6-3 in the quarterfinals.
Once the scene shifted to the indoor courts at Drumlins, Goldberg and Susko merely needed to win in the semifinals to advance to the state tournament -and did so, beating the Sauquoit Valley duo of Dana Bever and Ella Brutsky in a pair of 6-3 sets.
This led to the final against West Genesee’s no. 2-seeded duo of Samantha Heyn and Marisa Joyce. Goldberg and Susko won the opening set 6-3, and with the score 3-2 in the second set, Heyn and Joyce were forced to stop due to an injury.
Still, Heyn and Joyce would join Goldberg and Susko in qualifying for the Nov. 2-4 state championships at Tri-Valley Tennis Center in Latham, while Bever and Brutsky defeated Baldwinsville’s Taylor Ferrari and Natalie Kot 6-4, 6-3 to get the third and final berth.
That was what Pollock needed to do in singles. As the no. 2 seed, Pollock, like Goldberg and Susko, roared through the early rounds at Skytop, stopping Mexico’s Kristen Albright 6-0, 6-2 and Lowville’s Theresa Dines 6-1, 6-0 to advance to the semifinals at Drumlins.
Once there, though, Pollock ran into no. 3 seed Julia Wagner, from Auburn, and never could quite get on track in a 6-2, 6-4 defeat that forced her to have to win the consolation match against Wagner’s Maroons teammate, Lauryn Husby, who lost the other semifinal to top seed Kahlei Reisinger (Baldwinsville) 6-1, 6-1.
Responding well to the pressure, Pollock won the first set over Husby 6-2, and went on to take the second set 6-4 to claim that third and final state meet berth as Reisinger beat Wagner 6-4, 6-2 for the tournament title.
