Judging by the one-sided results posted throughout the fall, everything that Baldwinsville girls tennis senior Kahlei Reisinger has done so far has proven a warm-up for the big challenge ahead.
Reisinger has made it back to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship tournament for a fourth time. In 2014, she made it to the round of 16 before a closely-fought 7-6, 4-6, 7-5 defeat to the no. 3 seed, Eastport South Manor’s Jackie Buzkin.
Since that point, said Reisinger, she has worked hard on two critical aspects of her game. One is her forehand, which has proven more consistent this fall. The other part was her mental game, something that gets challenged every single time she steps on the court as an overwhelming favorite, as she was again in the state qualifier.
Determined to get back to Latham and advance a lot further, Reisinger has not dropped a set in any of her matches in 2015, including another clean sweep through last week’s Section III state qualifier at Drumlins Country Club’s indoor complex.
In the opening rounds last Tuesday, Reisinger did not drop a game, sweeping Whitesboro’s Toni Pelligrino 6-0, 6-0 and then doing the same to Oneida’s Jenna Russ after Russ had survived a three-set opener with Chittenango’s Kelly Gloo.
Moving to the semifinals on Thursday afternoon, Reisinger faced Mexico’s Givlia Bancale, and something odd happened – Bancale won two of the first three games. Reisinger said she was just fighting nerves, which was understandable, since the winner of this match automatically clinched a state tournament berth.
Once those nerves passed, the match belonged to Reisinger, who won the last 11 games over Bancale, prevailing 6-2, 6-0 to assure that she would again have a chance at a state championship.
Before that, though, there was the small matter of winning the tournament final against the no. 2 seed, New Hartford’s Sarah Corasanti. No one in Central New York has given Reisinger as tough a match as Corasanti did, pushing her in both sets before Reisinger prevailed by margins of 6-4 and 6-2.
Bancale beat Fayetteville-Manlius challenger Maggie Bonomo in the third-place match to join Reisinger and Corasanti on the state tournament team.
B’ville also had a serious contender for a state tournament berth on the doubles side thanks to the presence of Bridget Brown and Natalie Kot, who got within a set of reaching the semifinals, two victories away from advancing.
Brown and Kot started with a 6-0, 6-2 romp over Clinton’s Sydney Pavlik and Carly Sinclair. Now, in the quarterfinals, the B’ville pair encountered the Fayetteville-Manlius duo of Kristina Liu and Shirley Zhang, whom they knew quite well from two regular-season matches and the sectional Class A team final, all won by the Hornets.
Each of the two sets would prove close, but Brown and Kot couldn’t put together the points it needed at the end of those sets, falling to Liu and Zhang 6-4, 7-5.
The F-M pair went on to lose in the semifinals to Auburn’s top-seeded duo of Lauryn Husby and Julia Wagner, but Liu and Zhang beat Oneida’s Jillian Brodock and Briana Laureti in three sets in the third-place match, joining Husby and Wagner, along with West Genesee’s Samantha Heyn and Mikayla Mannara, in earning state tournament berths.
For Reisinger and the other qualifiers, state tournament play in Latham gets underway next Saturday, with matches spread out over three days until the Nov. 2 finals.
