Greenhills, Lumen Christi Earn Celebrations
June 3, 2017
By Keith Dunlap
Special for Second Half
HOLLY – If anyone watching the Lower Peninsula Division 4 No. 1 singles championship match Saturday wondered why Jackson Lumen Christi junior Taylor Smith was jumping up and down so much in between points, she had a method to that madness.
The second seed going into the tournament, Smith had lost her previous two matches this season to top seed Natalie Moyer of Kalamazoo Hackett, and Smith learned one valuable lesson before their third meeting.
“I had to constantly keep moving my feet,” Smith said. “I couldn’t stand still. I had to keep going the entire time and keep jumping up and down. I couldn’t get to her ball (in the first matches). She smacks the ball really hard, and in order to get the ball back I had to keep moving.”
Smith kept moving alright, all the way to when she accepted the medal handed out to the MHSAA Finals champion after she avenged those two earlier losses to Moyer with a 6-2, 6-2 victory.
Smith’s title at No. 1 singles ended up propelling Lumen Christi to its best ever finish at an MHSAA Girls Tennis Final, as the Titans took second with 27 points.
But leaving Holly High School with the championship trophy for the first time since 2009 was Ann Arbor Greenhills, which finished first with 32 points to cap off a year full of motivation after Greenhills disappointingly took fifth at last year’s Final.
“I’ve always felt the best thing to do is be Zen about these things,” Greenhills coach Mark Randolph said. “If you want to hit the target, you want to try and not aim at the target. Our goal was to be in the hunt on Day 2, and if we were in the hunt on Day 2, it’s all about bliss. Let’s go out there and let it rip, and they did.”
Reigning champion Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart scored 21 points to finish in third place.
Greenhills showcased its depth in winning the title with champions in four flights and a runner-up finish in another.
Vidhya Rajaprabhakaran at No. 3 singles, Phoebe Sotiroff at No. 4 singles, the team of Baani Jain and Giselle Farjo at No. 2 doubles and the team of Jamie Todd and Ryan Perry at No. 3 doubles were the champions for Greenhills.
Julia Freeman advanced to the final at No. 2 singles before losing to Maggie Ketels of Kalamazoo Hackett, 6-1, 6-4.
“Every single one of these kids made a huge contribution under pressure,” Randolph said. “We have five super seniors who have been dreaming about this since they were ninth graders and we were getting our hats handed to us.”
Lumen Christi coach Teri McEldowney had mixed emotions after everything was decided.
On one hand, she felt winning it all was an obtainable feat for her squad, but she said a couple of hard losses Friday and a couple more Saturday were too much to overcome.
On the other hand, though, it’s never a bad thing to finish higher than any other team in school history.
“My girls played the best that they ever played,” McEldowney said. “They brought it here, and that’s what matters to me.”
In addition to Smith’s title, Lumen Christi’s No. 1 doubles team of Geraldine Berkemeier and Jocee McEldowney prevailed in a thrilling three-set match over Sara Gerard and Anna Keating of Sacred Heart, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.
The Grand Rapids West Catholic duo of Elise Bolthouse and Izzi Nguyen won No. 4 doubles.
PHOTOS: (Top) Ann Arbor Greenhills’ Julia Friedman returns a volley during a No. 2 singles match Saturday. (Middle) Jackson Lumen Christi’s Taylor Smith powers through a swing on the way to winning No. 1 singles. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
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.)