It was hard to decide which of Thursday’s girls Ninth Region championship matches at Tower Park was the most dramatic because they both were.
Both the singles championship between Cooper’s Kayla Johnson and Beechwood’s Sadie Jones and the doubles final between Ryle’s Avery Love and Nive Selvaraju and Notre Dame’s Clare Shay and Sam Spellman needed a third set 10-point super-tiebreaker.
The top seeds ultimately prevailed – Johnson beat Jones, 6-3, 3-6, 1-0 (10-2), and Love and Selvaraju prevailed over Shay and Spellman, 5-7, 6-3, 1-0 (10-6). Johnson wasn’t expecting a third set.
“It’s OK,” Johnson said. “Things happen.”
At least one person – Cooper coach Wayne Griffith – thinks Johnson deserves a seed at the state tournament that begins May 28 at the University of Kentucky (boys singles and doubles), Berea College (girls singles) and Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond (girls doubles).
“She’s an excellent student,” Griffith said. “She can power up, she can power down. She’s a complete player.”
Love and Selvaraju won by alternating emotion control.
“When I get mad, she’s not,” Selvaraju said. “We she’s mad, I’m not, so we’re … calm at different times, and we help each other out.”
Johnson and Jones met for the second time this season – Johnson won the first in straight sets but required a seven-point tiebreaker in the second. Jones said “aiming for her backhand and just keeping the ball in play” was the plan.
“I think last time I was a little bit nervous,” Jones said. “I just hit the ball wherever.”
Johnson’s strategy was simple – serve to Jones’ backhand in the deuce court, handcuff her with groundstrokes with pace and make Jones run the baseline. It worked – Johnson took a 5-3 lead.
After a 10-minute discussion over scoring in the seventh game (Johnson didn’t hear Jones call a ball out), Jones held her serve. Johnson did the same to take the set.
“It’s more like a clean slate,” Jones said. “No matter what happened last set, I just think it’s a whole new one.”
Jones said an equipment change helped her in the second set – and added a little levity.
“I actually took off my sunglasses,” Jones said. “I was, like, maybe it was the sunglasses doing me wrong. I took them off, and then I started winning.”
Johnson, meanwhile, said being overly aggressive cost her.
“I was starting to overthink my shots a little bit instead of letting it flow,” she said.
Johnson opened the super-tiebreaker with a 7-2 lead, largely because her groundstrokes made Jones swing late and send shots out of bounds. After the match, Johnson hoped for a state seed.
“State definitely is a little weird because if you’re not seeded, you can go up against a seeded player,” Johnson said. “It’s how I got knocked out last year; I played the fourth seed.”
Love said the strategy against Shay and Spellman was to force short, weak lobs.
“We both think that we are pretty strong at the net, so we wanted to get high balls so we could end the point faster,” Love said. “We realize that when we were doing long rallies, (Shay and Spellman) were just better.”
After splitting the first two sets, Love and Selvaraju took a 7-2 lead – and then watched Shay and Spellman score the next four points.
“That was my fault,” Love said. “I think that we knew we were ahead and we knew we wanted to finish it.”
Love and Selvaraju scored the final three points despite not always knowing where Selvaraju’s serve was going.
“We work around where she hits it,” Love said. “We always figure it out.”
Ryle’s Kyah Andros and Maja Oldemanns of Highlands qualified for the state singles tournament that begins May 28. Notre Dame’s Lucy Bailey and Bella McElwee and Cassidy Derry and Emma Zimmer of Dixie Heights are in the doubles field.
Thursday also marked the end of an era. Beechwood girls coach Barb Wentz is retiring after 30 years.
“This is it,” Wentz said. “Thirty years is enough.”
