The girl’s tennis team qualified for the MHSAA State Finals in Kalamazoo on Thursday, despite falling two points short of their team goal of winning the tournament.
The Maple girls started the day strong, winning first round matches across the board, as well as having seven of eight flights compete in the championship round.
While Seaholm coach Keith Bernacki’s team seemed to be in the driver’s seat, only the #1 doubles team of Senior Chelsea Donlin and Junior Kaitlyn Miller were able to chalk up a first place finish with a thrilling third set victory over Marian, that involved a tiebreaker at 6-all in the third to decide the match.
“It definitely makes me want to focus even more when we are playing Marian,” said Donlin. “I mean they are a big rival for us, and I just really don’t like losing to Marian. We were kind of the underdog against them, and, like coach was saying, we wanted to prove them wrong.”
Those six points left on the table, which included three nerveracking three-set matches at #2, #3, and #4 doubles were costly in the end, as their 24 team points were edged by the Mustangs from Marian, who racked up 26.
“I would have liked to see us win more of those final matches, but everybody did their best,” said Donlin. “A lot of those matches went to three-sets, so we gave a really good effort as a team and almost beat them.”`
While the day didn’t end how the team would have hoped, there were definitely some positives from the tournament, including a qualifying spot for the State finals as well as a higher finish than their cross-town rival, Groves.
“I think we are playing our best tennis as a team heading into States,” said Donlin. “I feel like we didn’t play that well at the beginning, but we are peaking. I think we’re going to improve from last year when we finished fourth.”
At the State Finals, Bernacki’s team will have their work cut out for them.
“I don’t think it is going to be tough to get seeds at a lot of different flights,” said Bernacki. “I mean, we had some earlyseason losses to teams from our side of the state, so that will be different from last year in that we don’t really know what type of draw we are going to get.”
Despite some uncertainty as to how the matchups will fall, this team is poised to make a run in Kalamazoo, and is finding its stride at just the right time.
