Park View Avenges Lone Loss, Reaches Final

By Matt Brooks (Contact)

Friday, May 2, 2008

The girls’ tennis teams at Park View and Broad Run have become quite familiar with one another recently.

In the last week, the Patriots and Spartans had seen the same faces across the net on three separate occasions -- once last Thursday in a match suspended by darkness, again on Tuesday to complete that match and then once more immediately following the conclusion for the second match in the home-and-home season series.

Thursday afternoon at Park View, the top-seeded Patriots faced off against fourth-seeded Broad Run yet again, this time with a spot in the Dulles District tournament final on the line. After the Spartans played spoiler on Tuesday, upsetting the previously undefeated Patriots 5-4, the regular season champions got their revenge with a 6-1 victory.

“They’re smart,” Park View coach Kathryn Hackney said of her squad. “They play with their hearts, they play with intensity, they have a lot of good instinct, they have a lot of good court awareness. And like I tell them when they go out for every single match, ‘Your determination is the unseen point. They can’t see how determined you are.’ So when you have that to your advantage, you play relaxed, you stay cool and you play steady.”

At the start, the match played out just as the previous two contests had and it appeared to be on course for another 5-4 decision. Park View senior Megan Brown was first off the court at No. 3, dispatching senior Caitrin Dwyer 6-0, 6-2 and senior Krista McManus followed soon after with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Broad Run junior Shannon Northcott at No. 2 to give the Patriots (15-1) an early 2-0 lead.

But the Spartans (9-6) battled back as junior Alex Creech took care of senior No. 4 Thuy Nguyen in straight sets, 7-5, 6-2. Sophomore No. 1 Angela Angillilo quickly took the first set from Park View senior Lisa Huynh but had to gut out a second-set tie-breaker to close it out and knot the match at 2-2.

After senior Sarah Groves outlasted Broad Run junior Rei Prasad at No. 6 to give the Patriots the lead back, all eyes were on court five, where Park View junior Lindsey Kibler and Broad Run sophomore Carrie Sartor’s grueling match moved to a third and decisive set.

Sartor, who bounced back from losing the opening set to dominate the second, jumped out 4-3 and was up one service break, but Kibler responded. She consistently mixed up her shots, lobbing Sartor to push her back to the baseline and then finessing unreachable drop-shots just over the net to win several key points. With both players gassed, Kibler’s tactics proved most effective as she won three straight games to take the match (7-5, 2-6, 6-4) and give her team a 4-1 advantage heading into doubles play.

“That was a real turning point,” Hackney said. “The other day the No. 5 match went the other way and we were coming out of singles tied at 3-3.”

The Patriots needed just one more point to clinch the match and after all three Park View doubles teams won their opening sets, it was a race to determine the decider. The No. 3 tandem of Groves and Katie Antonacci took the honor, defeating Creech and Prasad in straight sets, 6-0, 6-1, to send Park View to the district championship.

Broad Run – which only loses one senior from its team – had already accomplished a major team goal earlier in the week, knocking off the undefeated Patriots and preventing them from completing the perfect regular season that the 2006 Spartans achieved. But they couldn’t duplicate their success on Thursday.

“That will probably be the biggest match that we’ll remember from this season,” Broad Run coach Dan McNeil said. “I’m proud of each and every girl, they fought until the end and now we can look forward to next year.”

Park View will face Heritage in Friday’s final, a team it swept in two meetings during the regular season. Regardless of the result, they are in the Virginia AA Region II tournament as the regular season district champions. Should they add the district tournament title to that accomplishment, they would be rewarded with a bye in the first round of regionals.

“It’s hard to beat a team three times, and I know that from experience,” Hackney said. “So my line to them is, ‘Take it one point at a time, one game at a time and one match at a time.’ We don’t look forward, we only focus on the one we have right now. If we win tomorrow, we know we’ll have the number one seed, which would be big. But we’ve just got to be ready to play and see what happens.”

HERITAGE 5, LOUDOUN COUNTY 2

In the second semi-final, second-seeded Heritage knocked off No. 3 Loudoun County 5-2 to advance to Friday's final against Park View. The Pride took four of the six singles matches to grab a 4-2 lead heading into doubles play. Singles winners for Heritage included Meleah Nassar (No. 1), Beth Gurney (No. 4), Michelle Rudman (No. 5) and Minh Bui (No. 6). For the Raiders, Kerry Sarver and Jillian Harris won their matches at No. 2 and No. 3 respectively. The Pride clinched the victory when Nassar and Replogle defeated Hurley and Sarver at No. 1 doubles.

Extra Points

By Paul Tenorio and Matt Brooks