Backing up the top seed they had earned, West Genesee’s girls doubles tandem of Samantha Heyn and Marisa Joyce prevailed during this week’s Section III state qualifier at Drumlins Tennis Club.
As a result, the Wildcat’s pair is making it back to Tri-City Tennis Center in Latham, near Albany, next weekend for another go-round at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association tournament.
This is the fourth state tournament appearance for Heyn, and the third for Joyce. Having experienced early exits in each of their previous visits, they said the key this time around is to seize the initiative from Saturday morning’s opening-round match.
“We’ll just try to be more aggressive and consistent,” said Joyce. “It (the competition) is a lot different there, but we can still compete if we play our game.”
The key, said Heyn, is “not to have any expectations. We’re just going to go down there and have fun.”
They certainly enjoyed the state qualifier, not losing a set in four matches and gaining some payback for their teammates along the way.
In the opening round last Tuesday, Heyn and Joyce had little trouble in a 6-2, 6-0 victory over Cortland’s Courtney Marshall and Jennifer Wang. Then, in the quarterfinals, it was the same story, Heyn and Joyce overpowering CBA’s Allison Croucher and Sarah Roberts 6-3, 6-0.
When the tournament resumed on Thursday, Heyn and Joyce simply had to win their semifinal against Jamesville-DeWitt’s Junghye Kim and Maya Pollock to qualify for the state tournament, and did so in another lopsided effort, winning 6-1, 6-1.
The final pitted Heyn and Joyce against the Skaneateles team of Makenzi Herbst and Grace Magee, who had, back in the quarterfinals, thwarted the state tournament dreams of WG’s other top doubles team, Taylor Ginestro and Kayla Llanos.
In that earlier match, Ginestro and Llanos lost the first set 6-1 and won the second set 6-3. Trailing 5-2 in the fifth set, they came back to pull even, 5-5, and ultimately went to a tie-breaker, but Herbst and Magee got all of the crucial points to claim the tie-breaker 7-6 and the match.
With all that as a backdrop, Heyn and Joyce atoned for what had happened to their teammates, beating Herbst and Magee in the first set 6-4 and taking the second set 6-2 to win the championship.
They all advance to the state tournament, though, joined by Sauquoit Valley’s sister tandem of Ella and Tanya Brutsky, along with the singles trio of Baldwinsville’s Khalei Reisinger, Auburn’s Julia Wagner and New Hartford’s Sarah Corasanti. Matches at Latham start Saturday at 9 a.m.
Marcellus saw all five of its tennis players eliminated in the opening round of the state qualifier. Lexi Randall, the newly-crowned Division III singles sectional champion, fell to Manlius-Pebble Hill’s Grace Del Pino 6-3, 6-3.
Over in doubles, Audrey Cerrone and MaryKate McHale fell to Croucher and Roberts 6-2, 6-4, with Alexandra Burrows and Genevieve Rao taking a 6-2, 6-0 defeat to New Hartford’s Rachel Madden and Emily Steates.
