Thanks a lot for the invitation, ladies
As if that weren’t dominating enough, Nelson elevated her performance to an even higher level Saturday, August 27, as the Lady Knights hosted the West Holmes Invitational, with Nelson knocking off Ann Carracher of Mansfield St. Peter’s in the opening round, and Alix Stein of New Philadelphia in the championship match, both in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0….without losing a single point.
Nelson’s unbelievable performance highlighted the day for West Holmes, which ran away with the team title at its own invitational by winning four of the five championship matches, racking up nine points to finish ahead of St. Peter’s (4), New Philadelphia (3) and Triway (1.5).
The one match the Lady Knights couldn’t capture may have been the most entertaining match of the day, however, as Brittany Polen battled Maddie Zupan of St. Peter’s for three sets, after beating Triway’s Sarah Herald 7-5, 6-0 to advance to the championship round of second singles.
Polen cruised through the first set against Zupan, winning 6-3 before the Lady Spartan returned the favor in set number two, with a 6-3 win of her own, which forced the only third set tiebreaker of the day, eventually won by the St. Peter’s product after 16 additional points, 10-6.
“Saturday was a great day,” said ninth-year West Holmes head coach Jason Otto, after watching junior, first-year varsity player Marki Hogle step onto the third singles court looking to exact a little revenge for her teammate, in her championship match against Natalie Zupan of St. Peter’s. “We have never had all five spots in the finals and we were literally just a few points from sweeping all five events.”
Hogle allowed only a few points against Natalie Zupan – after sliding easily past Abby Bischel of New Philadelphia in the opening round, 6-1, 6-1 – winning the first set against the Lady Spartan 6-3, before ramping it up and putting away the match with a 6-2 win in set number two.
“Triway is a young team that is rebuilding,” explained Otto, talking about his high school alma mater. “St. Pete’s and Philly are both solid, so it was nice for our team to get wins over them.
“I was also really impressed with the play of New Philly’s doubles teams and I thought our girls had to – and did – play very well to beat them,” he added, after Jenna Polen and Hannah Frank pulled out a 7-5, 6-2 straight-sets win in their first doubles championship match against the Lady Quakers pairing of Kaitlyn Menges and Courtney Spears; while Miranda Huebner and Chelsea Black took out Emma Weaver and Alex Kropff 6-3, 6-4 at second doubles.
But Black would move to the second singles court when the Lady Knights turned their attention back to the regular season, on Monday, August 29, with first-place trophies from the West Holmes Invitational in hand as they travelled to Zanesville to take on a Lady Blue Devils team, which could only produce four players, forcing them to forfeit to Huebner at third singles and to the Polen sisters at second doubles.
West Holmes only dropped three combined games in the remaining three matches as Nelson buried Allison Durant 6-0, 6-0, Black handled Emily Denton 6-0, 6-2, and the all-sophomore pairing of Morgan Wagers and Savannah Yoder improved to 3-0 in their young varsity careers with an easy 6-0, 6-1 victory over Ciara Epler and Molly Sheline.
“What can you say?” asked Otto rhetorically. “Look at the results. They only had four girls. I guess it was nice to get Morgan and Savannah some more varsity experience.”
That was nice with the entire West Holmes team looking to elevate its performance to an even higher level, and with history possibly looming on the horizon as West Holmes gets set to host Clear Fork on Thursday, Sept. 1.
“Right now we are 6-0 in the regular season,” explained Otto. “With one more win we will tie the best start for our girls team ever, at 7-0. That last happened in ’09 when we went into Lexington 7-0. Hopefully we will go into [Columbus] DeSales 7-0 (Sept. 3) because that starts a stretch of five difficult matches, including DeSales, Wooster, Lexington, Dover and Ashland.”
Otto hopes his entire team can do what Nelson did when she was 6-0 on the season…elevate their performances to an even higher level.