SYRACUSE – When Section III sends 12 singles and doubles players to Schenectady for this weekend’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association girls tennis championships, it will have a lot of local flavor.
Players from Jamesville-DeWitt and Fayetteville-Manlius are in the field in Schenectady, having earned their spots during last week’s sectional state qualifying tournament at Syracuse University’s Drumlins Tennis Club.
They are led by J-D’s Mona Farah, who made a strong run to the singles title by defeating two different Baldwinsville standouts for the top prize and, in so doing, earned her fourth NYSPHSAA tournament appearance.
Farah, as the no. 2 seed, dropped just one game in four sets last Tuesday against Isabelle Soderberg (Skaneateles) and Rachel Molloy (Cazenovia) to reach her semifinal.
As the top seed, Manlius Pebble Hill’s Amitees Fazeli also rolled through the opening rounds, beating Oneida’s Madison Castle 6-1, 6-0 and F-M’s Sadie Toole 6-2, 6-3 after Toole beat Emma Kane (Whitesboro) in the first round.
Their paths diverged in the semifinals, which determined automatic state tournament berths. Farah, in a two-hour battle with B’ville’s Mira Nadzan, prevailed in three sets, taking the final set 6-2, while Fazeli fell to Alya Kalfass 6-4, 6-3.
The final proved far less stressful to Farah as she defeated Kalfass 6-2, 6-0, while Fazeli could not get a set against Nadzan, taking a 6-3, 6-4 loss as her state tournament dreams fell just short.
Three other local players lost in the opening round, with MPH’s Caroline Mezzalingua and Fariel Migeed taking defeats and Bishop Grimes seeing Sofia Ziankoski fall to Kalfass in straight sets and Migeed falling to Nadzan.
Over in doubles, it was F-M getting two teams into the semifinals, led by the no. 2 seeds, Trisha Adavikolanu and Lindsay Chong, who dropped just one game in four sets in the early rounds, including a 6-0, 6-1 quarterfinal win over MPH’s Rose Fallon and Sabrina Loop.
Meanwhile, Selena Chen and Shreya Bhattacharya, the no. 5 seed, also claimed straight-set wins in the early rounds, taking out Homer’s Emma Effinger and Lauren Franco 6-4, 6-2 in the quarterfinals.
The semifinals had Adavikolanu and Chong topping Oneida’s Myah Rainbow and Juliana Caroli, while in the other semifinal Chen and Bhattacharya fell to B’ville’s Sonia Nadzan and Elaina Nesbitt.
Both would get beat, Adavikolanu and Chong taking a 6-0, 6-2 loss as Chen and Bhattacharya also fell in two sets by scores of 6-2 and 6-3. Nadzan and Nesbitt would go on to take the doubles title.
