Story by Coach Ed Douglas

     In a pretty remarkable day the Lady Hornets qualified all their players for State Sectionals by their entire team finishing 1st and 2nd in both singles and doubles Friday in St Joe. Coach Ed Douglas said “ I have coached boys and or girls 19 seasons and have several times qualified 4 people in District, and twice have qualified 5 but until now I have never qualified all six. That is pretty remarkable because basically our #5 and #6 girls are beating the other teams #1 and #2 players. (Admittedly it is not an apples to apples comparison in that in the old days the District was 13 teams and now they have divided District so that each District is about half the size with 5 or 6 teams, but I still have never had all 6 qualify at District”
     “Our 5 and 6 girls were actually beating everyone else’s #1 and #2 players because all the other teams put their best players in doubles knowing they had no chance against Sydnie and Ali in Singles.” “I would do the same thing if I were them”
     As expected two time State Qualifiers and Two time State Medalists Sydnie Whiteside and Ali Stephens (2nd and 4th in State last year respectively) met in the finals. Sydnie prevailed 6-3 6-0. “The last two times they have played the matches were decided by 1 point each match. Today Sydnie played extremely well and I think Ali was slightly off from her best and that little difference can sometimes make a fairly big difference in a final score” “Sydnie and Ali are both amazing. Sydnie is 35-0 in singles this year and Ali has won 31 matches with only 2 losses both coming to Sydnie” “ We have high expectations for them and expect them to be the favorites at Sectional Monday in Cameron to return to the State tournament in Springfield for a third time.”
     In the doubles as in singles there were 10 entries (2 from each of the 5 schools. “I felt like there were about 7 teams or 8 teams nearly equal. Jozie Reeter and Kelly Westphal were seeded 1st because of a couple of close wins at Conference.
     Our 2nd doubles team, Chelsea Long and Renee Downing were not one of the 4 seeds. “We have been working very hard the last couple of weeks doing doubles drills to prepare ourselves for this. The girls worked really hard these last weeks and Amanda and I knew they have improved dramatically in this short period of time. Jozie and Kelly had a bye in the first round and then defeated Cameron #1 team (#2 team is better and was seeded #2 in the tournament which is rather unusual) They won this match 6-4 6-1. In the semis they played Savannah’s #1 team (seeded 4th). One of the girls won District in doubles last year. This was about as tight a match as it gets. We were down 2-5 in the first set but came back and won 7-5. Then we lost the second set 5-7 and then were down 3-5 in the third set.
      “It really looked bleak at that point but Jozie and Kelly are very good at comebacks. They rattled off 4 straight games to win the third set 7-5. Chelsie and Renee played a very good first round beating a good Savannah team 6-1 6-2. Then they beat the #2 seed from Cameron in a three set match 6-4 4-6 6-0. I thought that was their best match of the year. Then they beat Trenton #1 in the semis 6-4 7-5. No one expected Chelsea and Renee to get this far but we knew they were playing very well. In the all Chilly doubles finals Kelly and Jozie defeated Chelsea and Renee 6-2 6-3.
     Next up is Sectionals Monday at Cameron. The winners of our District play the Runners Up in District 15 and the Runner Ups in our District (16) play the winners in District 15. Sydnie and Ali will be the favorites in Singles I would expect barring some unexpected player coming out of no where. In doubles we will most likely play Benton- my best guess. The two Benton doubles teams finished 1st and 2nd in Conference in which we finished 3rd and 5th so you would expect them to be favored, but we are getting better all the time and think are chances have improved.
     Friday, Maryville defaulted the team Championship to Chillicothe. “This is not the way we wanted to win but we had a rain out Wednesday and Thursday. Maryville had their homecoming dance Saturday night so they were reluctant to play Saturday afternoon so we offered to play in the morning on Saturday but they have a band day and so three of their players were choosing band over the team match.. We discussed playing Monday but they decided to default.
     We were disappointed to win that way but we can’t control what others do. Team Sectionals which will have District Winners from District 13, 14, 15, 16 will be Saturday the 11th most likely in Marshall. The winner of the two matches in the morning play in the afternoon that day. The first round is the round of 16 and the second round is the State Quarterfinals.