Greenhills Girls Clinch 1st Repeat Team Championship in Semifinals
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
June 3, 2023
KALAMAZOO — Ann Arbor Greenhills made school history this weekend and did so with a “secret weapon,” according to coach Mark Randolph.
The Gryphons ran away with the team title at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 Girls Tennis Tournament on Saturday at Kalamazoo College’s Stowe Stadium.
Greenhills amassed 36 points to outdistance the field and win back-to-back state titles, a first in school history for the girls team.
Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard finished second with 20 points, followed by Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart with 18 and Traverse City St. Francis with 16.
Two Grand Rapids teams, West Catholic and Catholic Central, tied for fifth with 15 points each.
“I was saying to anyone who would listen, I think we were here five years ago and we had one singles qualifier who lost 6-2, 6-2, in the first round,” Randolph said.
“We’ve sort of been off the stage. Because the boys have been strong, people assume it’s just been the same (with the girls). We’ve had to build.”
The building started in the middle school, where the “secret weapon” comes into play.
Five years ago, the coach’s wife, Becky Randolph, joined the English faculty at the school.
“I asked her to take over the middle school team,” the coach said. “While she doesn’t know anything about tennis, she knows an awful lot about young women and program building.
“She put it in these kids’ heads that if they stayed, they would get a great education but also be the start of a dynasty, she called it. So she sold them on the start of a dynasty.”
Things bode well for the future with the Gryphons losing just one senior, Manassa Gollapalli, to graduation.
The second-seeded senior defeated top-seeded senior Audrey Lee, of St. Francis, 6-3, 6-2, in the No. 4 singles final.
Gollapalli’s 6-1, 6-2, semifinal win over sixth seed Laura Williams, from Father Gabriel Richard, was actually the point that clinched the title for her team.
“It’s my last match of my high school season, so I was just trying to enjoy it,” Gollapalli said. But even if she had lost the flight final, “The team won so I can celebrate with my team no matter what happens.”
Finishing second, Father Gabriel Richard also loses just one senior and has an eye on closing the gap with its in-city rival.
The Irish started the season unranked, but climbed to third in the polls heading into the tournament.
Last year, they finished 13th at the Finals.
“Going from 13th to second is an incredible jump,” coach Jim Sayed said. “I have to acknowledge our senior captain Vivian (Heegan) and our junior captains Deena (Farjo) and Laura (Williams) for all their hard work this year for guiding the young players and showing them the way. We’ve done an incredible job all season long thanks to them.”
The tournament was the third time the Irish and Greenhills faced off this season.
“Congratulations to Greenhills,” Sayed said. “They’re an incredible team. We gave it our best shot against them. We had a lot of good matches, and the girls fought hard.”
Knowing the two teams will be back on the courts against each other next season, Sayed added: “That Greenhills team is very talented, returning a lot of players and we’ll have to put in a lot of hard work in the offseason to catch them. But I think our girls are up for that challenge.”
Greenhills sophomore Maddie Morgan, who lost in the semifinals at No. 1 singles last year as the third seed, lived up to her top billing at No. 1 singles this year with a 6-4, 6-3, win over freshman Jenny Florea, the second seed from Father Gabriel Richard.
This was the fourth time the two have played this season, with the previous three going three sets each.
“It was crazy,” Morgan said. “I won the first two and she won at Regionals. It’s kind of a rivalry.
“I was kind of thinking this one could (go three sets) too, but all the previous matches, I won the first set then lost the second so this time I knew I had to grind in the second set and try to get it out.”
Florea said playing in her first MHSAA Tournament was a “little nerve-wracking as a freshman, but I tried my best. I did what I needed to. It was a tough loss.
“I was hoping I could end it in two, but it didn’t happen. I made more mistakes and she put more balls in play. She had a tough mindset.”
Sophomore Shangyang Xia, the top seed from Greenhills, defeated Heegan, the second seed from Father Gabriel Richard, 6-3, 6-2, at No. 2 singles.
Although she defeated Heegan twice this season, Xia said she did not take anything for granted.
“Everybody improves, and she’s a really well-rounded athlete,” Xia said. “It was definitely hard to play her, but I just tried to be myself and I came through.”
As for winning the team title in the semifinals, “It was a weight lifting off our shoulders when we heard that,” she said.
Heegan said cheerleading in the fall and playing basketball in the winter helps her tennis.
“It almost seems like having a break between each tennis season helps me, weirdly enough,” she said.
Looking back on her four years of varsity tennis, “You don’t really get a setting of high school tennis anywhere else,” she said. “It’s very friendly between teams and you kind of root for teams you know at big tournaments. It’s cool in that way. It’s a fun sport, a social sport.”
A pair of freshmen faced off at No. 3 singles, with Greenhills top seed Danica Rakic-Dennis defeating Father Gabriel Richard’s second seed Kenna Trost, 6-1, 6-1.
Playing in her first MHSAA Tournament, “It’s really fun,” Rakic-Dennis said. “It’s a new experience playing with a team. It’s a great stadium, and I’m happy to be here.”
Two of the closest finals matches were in doubles.
At No. 1, Academy of the Sacred Heart’s third seeds Jade Horcoff and Kayla Nafso defeated Greenhills top seeds Sophie Chen and Lauren Ye 7-5, 7-6(2). At No. 3, Academy of the Sacred Heart’s top seeds Alana Hindo and Presley Krywko defeated second seeds Meera Pandey and Meera Tewari, from Greenhills, 6-2, 7-6(3).
In the other two doubles finals, Academy of the Sacred Heart’s top seeds Maggie Pulte and Lulu George defeated Wixom St. Catherine’s third seeds, Katie Grewe and Julia Ivezaj, 6-2, 6-1, at No. 2, while Greenhills’ second seeds Arya Prabhakar and Aoife Tang defeated Grand Rapids Catholic Central’s fourth seeds, Mary Irwin and Arabella Sassano, 6-2, 6-4, at No. 4.
PHOTOS by High School Sports Scene.
Country Day Near-Perfect in Repeat Run
June 3, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
KALAMAZOO – There were cheers and congrats after the final match at Saturday’s Division 3 Finals at Kalamazoo College.
On the other side of the net, Detroit Country Day’s tennis players mostly were speechless as senior Sasha Hartje pulled aside a teammate to tell her it was OK.
The Yellowjackets had fallen in the final match of the day. But they’d won the first 39 of the weekend. So for the veteran Hartje, surrounded by mostly younger teammates, it was an understandable but still weird scene – one point shy of perfect was still perfect enough for the repeat champions.
“Nobody’s going to remember this one match we lost. They’re going to remember that we won 39 out of a possible 40 points, and that’s unbelievable,” Hartje said.
“We’ve never done this well, collectively, as a team. And we’ve never been as bonded as we are as a team this year, so it was unbelievable my senior year to be this close with all my teammates and to win this – and I got to win with my sister, which was super exciting for me.”
Country Day cleared the field by 16 points after last season winning the Lower Peninsula Division 3 title by only one.
It’s fair to say this was expected. All eight Yellowjackets flights entered Friday’s first round as top seeds. Sophomore Monique Karoub, senior Sadina Fadel and freshmen Nina Khaghany and Alexis Nardicchio swept Nos. 1-4 singles, respectively, without losing a set.
On the doubles side, Hartje and her sophomore sister Elle gave up only two games on the way to their win. Junior Heather Zimmerman and sophomore Tara Rahmani at No. 2 and juniors Jenna Lee and Maya Nassif at No. 4 also made it through their brackets without giving up a set.
That left the No. 3 doubles final as the last match of the tournament. The crowd gathered anticipating that another Country Day win would give the team the first perfect score in MHSAA Tennis Finals history.
But after winning the first set on a tie-breaker and then dropping the second 6-2, Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood seniors Francis Dube and Ava Harb put the finishing touches on a second straight flight championship by claiming the third set 6-2. Dube and Harb had won the No. 4 doubles title in 2016.
Still, Country Day’s 39 team points tied Cranbrook Kingswood’s 2013 team for the most at a Girls Tennis Final in at least a decade.
“Obviously we want everyone to win just because they feel better when they win. But we’re proud of everyone, and 3 doubles, they played a really tough match and fought all the way through,” Country Day coach Jessica Stencel said. “It’s hard being the only team that doesn’t come out on top, but they still got second. I think that’s pretty great too. And 39 out of 40, I think that’s a pretty solid year.”
It had an interesting start. Hartje, last season’s champion at No. 1 singles and the runner-up in 2015, suffered multiple ankle sprains playing an early game for the soccer team and had to miss six weeks for recovery.
By the time she returned, she said, it didn’t make sense to challenge for her former spot atop the singles lineup – so instead she joined her sister at No. 1 doubles and helped Elle earn a second straight championship at that flight.
“We’re really lucky that Monique (Karoub, who won No. 2 singles in 2016) is equally as talented. She finished barely losing any games in this entire tournament,” Stencel said. “Sasha is so talented and really helped us out at No. 1 doubles, and the whole way from top to bottom they did really well this year.”
So did Grand Rapids Christian, the runner-up for the second straight season – but this time in a self-admitted surprise. The Eagles graduated seven from the team that just missed winning a year ago, and had only two senior starters and three freshmen in the doubles lineup.
Senior McKenzie Moorhead (No. 2 singles), juniors Maria Poortenga (No. 3) and Emily Schellenboom (No. 4), and freshman Maya Barbee and junior Anna Cole (No. 4 doubles) all finished flight runners-up.
“You just try to go with a good core. We had a great set of leaders at the top, Leah (Newhof) and McKenzie as number one and two singles players, and when you have that luxury of great players at the top, you really look to make sure your depth is good,” Grand Rapids Christian coach Tim Morey said. “That’s where we kinda made our money. … We really looked to build with some youth. We have three freshmen and a few juniors, and we have a really nice mix that allowed us to have the depth we needed to be successful when we got to the state finals.”
Adding to the historic nature of this tournament was Imlay City senior Grace Whitney. She advanced to the championship match at No. 1 singles before falling to Karoub 6-0, 6-1, to end a mighty rise among the state’s elite.
As a freshman, Whitney was the first player from her school – girls or boys – to qualify for the MHSAA Tennis Finals. Last spring as a junior, she advanced to the No. 1 singles semifinals as the fifth seed. She entered this weekend seeded second.
“I’m from a small town and there’s not a lot of people who go do great big things, so it really means a lot,” said Whitney, who will play next season at Wright State University in Ohio. “And all the people in my town all support me.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Country Day No. 2 singles player Sadina Fadel connectsduring Saturday's finals rounds at Kalamazoo College. (Middle) McKenzie Moorhead returns a volley on the way to finishing runner-up at No. 2 singles for Grand Rapids Christian. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)