Having not dropped a set in any of her matches this season, Baldwinsville girls tennis star Kahlei Reisinger returns to Drumlins next week for the Section III state qualifier, favored to make a return to Latham for the Octo. 31-Nov. 2 state championship tournament.
Reisinger and the rest of the Bees were at Syracuse University’s Skytop Courts, for the sectional Division I tournaments that started Wednesday afternoon, a mere four days after a tough 4-3 defeat to Fayetteville-Manlius in the Oct. 10 sectional Class A team final in Utica.
As the top seed, Reisinger put away Erin McCarthy (Central Square) 6-0, 6-1, followed by a quarterfinal where she swept Madison Murphy (Cicero-North Syracuse) 6-0, 6-0.
Thursday’s semifinal for Reisinger was against another Central Square foe, Brianna Grimes, and again she did not drop a game in a 6-0, 6-0 decision. The final wasn’t much different, with F-M’s Maggie Bonomo offering little resistance as Reisinger, by a 6-1, 6-1 margin, prevailed again.
Also in singles, Amanda Coogan and Jennifer Stone took part. Stone rallied past C-NS’s Brooke Murphy in a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 battle, only to run into Grimes and, again, going to three sets before taking a 7-6, 2-6, 6-3 defeat.
Coogan’s fate mirrored Stone’s, only without the three-set scenarios. A 6-1, 6-2 romp over Central Square’s Stephanie Kubis got Stone into the quarterfinals, but once there, Bonomo proved too tough, prevailing 6-1, 6-0.
Moving to Division I doubles, the Bees saw Bridget Brown and Natalie Kot enter the tournament as the no. 3 seed, with Lauren Dusse and Taylor Slink the no. 5 seed, and Gabby Fiello and Marissa Tommarello unseeded.
Brown and Kot met F-M’s Madison Jordan and Olivia Wojnovich in the opening round and won, 6-1, 6-2. In a tense quarterfinal, Brown and Kot won again, rallying past Mary Frontale and Kayla Llanos (West Genesee) 4-6, 6-2, 6-0 and reaching the semifinals, thus clinching a berth in the state qualifier.
In that semifinal round, Brown and Kot met another pair of Wildcats, Samantha Heyn and Mikayla Mannara, and could not hold an early lead, falling to Heyn and Mannara 4-6, 6-2, 6-0 as the Wildcats’ pair went on to a three-set defeat to Auburn’s Lauryn Husby and Julia Wagner in the finals.
Dusse and Slink faced Brynn Adner and Kelly Skinner (Oswego), requiring their own comeback to survive a 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 decision. Then F-M’s Kristina Liu and Shirley Zhang knocked out Dusse and Slink 6-3, 6-4. Fiello and Tommarello were up against another F-M duo, Mary Trop and Abby Welker, and lost by scores of 6-4 and 6-1.
