It took a clean sweep of doubles for the Baldwnisville girls tennis team to earn one more shot at Fayetteville-Manlius with the Section III Class A team championship at stake.
The no. 2 seed Bees met no. 3 seed Auburn in last Wednesday’s sectional semifinal, and the Maroons won all three singles matches, requiring B’ville to turn it around on the doubles side – which it did, ending up with a 4-3 victory.
Paige Tromblee had to face Auburn’s Julia Wagner, a favorite to reach the state tournament, and lost her first singles match, 6-0, 6-0. Alina Minkova and Taylor Collado got closer, but each of them lost, too, Minkova falling to Celia Mattie 6-1, 6-4 and Collado taking a 6-3, 6-3 defeat to Katherine Brundage.
To begin the turnaround, B’ville’s first doubles team of Jennifer Stone and Brooke Tutor went out and ripped Anna Streeter and Lexi Calkins 6-0, 6-2. Then Katherine Cassidy and Gabby Fiello had their turn, and won, 6-4, 6-1, over Sydney Merkley and Lindsay Jarman.
Though the other two doubles matches would take a bit longer, the Bees handled them, too, with Amanda Coogan and Lauren Devine getting a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Emma Solomon and Makayla Huntley as Yasha Parawar and Riley Warren got past Sydney Whitney and Samantha Lesch 6-3, 7-5.
And it set up Friday’s final at Utica Parkway Courts, where B’ville would try to put a dent into a formidable F-M side against which it only earned one point in two head-to-head regular-season matches.
It proved quite competitive, and the Bees would have plenty of good moments, but not enough of them to keep the Hornets from claiming a 7-0 decision and, once again, claiming the sectional team title.
The closest call came in second doubles, where Collado and Minkova won the first set 6-1 over Keara Polovick and Anna Manta, and had the second set in a tie-breaker, only ot have Polovick and Manta take that tie-breaker 7-2 and beat Collado and Minkova 6-4 in the third set.
Cassidy and Fiello could not win a long first-set tie-breaker against Martha Welker and Maddy Drapeau in a 7-6 (10-8), 6-3 defeat, while Tromblee and Devine fell to Patrice Calancie and Diana Polovick 7-6 (7-3), 6-3. Parawar and Warren kept things close, but also lost, 6-4, 6-4, to Anna Charlamb and Rachel Liu.
Up in singles, the Bees had a more difficult time, seeing Stone fall to F-M’s Maggie Bonomo 6-0, 6-3 and Tutor lose, 6-2, 6-1, to Katerina Atallah, while Coogan had a 6-2, 6-2 defeat to Kristina Liu. B’ville’s top singles and doubles players would go into individual sectional tournaments early this week.
