Tigresses living out a dream
PHS captures first
sectional championship
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| The Princeton Tigresses are all smiles holding the first sectional girls’ tennis trophy in school history Saturday in Rochelle. All six PHS girls qualified for state as the Tigresses edged Rochelle for the team title, 27-26. (BCR photo/Kevin Hieronymus) |
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ROCHELLE — Connie Lind could have never dreamed this one up.
Her Princeton Tigress tennis team captured the first sectional championship in school history, defeating the host Hubs, 27-26, to top honors. The icing on the Tigresses’ cake is they advanced all four entries to the state tournament, including a pair of doubles teams and two singles.
“The girls set their goals at the beginning of the season, and their dream came true,” Lind said.
Did that dream include taking all six to state?
“No. I think it’s hard to believe all four teams qualified for state,” she said.
Senior Evinne Dimmig becomes the first PHS player to repeat going to state, capturing second place at singles. She will be joined by Alex Beetz, who was fourth in singles, and the Tigress doubles teams of Lindsay Frank and Courtney Schafer and Tristan Hicks and Emiley Brand, who placed third and fourth
“It’s really a humbling experience to have us all go. The experience will be so much better with all of us getting to enjoy it,” Dimmig said.
“It’s an awesome feeling to accomplish something the school’s never done. We won sectional as a team, and our whole team is going to state. So that’s fun,” Hicks said.
“I’m excited. I think it will be fun because we all qualified,” Frank said. “We were hoping to send one or two people, but not all six.”
“It’s really cool we all got to go,” Schafer said.
The biggest surprise for PHS, without a doubt, had to be Beetz, who is a first-year senior tennis player with exactly one singles match under her belt going into sectional. She came away with a fourth-place qualifying berth thanks to victories over L-P’s Christy Savellano 6-4, 6-0, and St. Bede’s Maggie Pryde 6-4, 6-1.
She admits to her novelty as a tennis player, having previously tried her hand at volleyball, basketball, track, softball, soccer, dance and gymnastics.
“I’ve tried pretty much every sport there is,” she said. “I’ve only been playing tennis three to four months. I kind of picked up a racquet over the summer. I didn’t think I was very good at first. I don’t know. I just practiced really hard and did the best I could in every single match, and here I am.”
Beetz took eventual sectional champ Jessica Albers of Rochelle to three sets, even though she was shut out in two sets, 6-0, 3-6, 6-0. She dropped the third-place match to L-P’s Kulis 6-1, 6-0.
“Alex is a steady player, she keeps the ball in play and makes her opponent make the mistakes,” Lind said.
Dimmig won her first three matches, defeating St. Bede’s Claire Kunkel 6-2, 6-0; Morris’ Tara Davis 7-6, 2-6, 6-3; and L-P’s Nikki Kulis 6-4, 6-3. In the finals, she ran into Rochelle’s Jessica Albers, who claimed first-place honors with a 6-2, 6-3 over the PHS ace.
Dimmig removed her shoes as she walked off the court, trying to soothe the blisters on her toes, disappointed in the outcome of the finals match.
“I had a real test (against Kulis) and got down on myself,” Dimmig said. “I didn’t feel like I put together the competitive match I was going for in the championship. (Albers) was really on top of her match and deserved it.”
The strangest moment of the day came when the two Princeton doubles teams squared off for the third-place match. They all called it weird, especially when it came down to having to take it seriously.
“It was very tough because when they play each other in practice, they never take it serious. This was one of the times they had to take it serious,” Lind said. “It was a tough outcome. Today, the No. 2 prevailed.”
Schafer said, “We started to play, and it got competitive.”
“It was weird, just ‘cause I could see them getting down on themselves, and I wanted to tell them to stay positive because I don’t like watching them cry. I felt so bad,” Frank said.
Hicks called it a Catch 22.
“It’s kind of hard. You don’t want to lose, and you don’t want to win,” she said.
Frank and Schafer came away with the third-place medals with a 6-2, 6-2 win over their teammates. Frank said third place “feels good, but I think we could have played better our (semifinal) match and done better overall on the day.”
They dropped their semifinal match to Rochelle 7-5, 6-2.
Brand and Hicks, who have only recently played doubles together, reached the semis by blanking Streator 6-0, 6-0 and defeating Rochelle 6-2, 6-3 before falling to eventual doubles champion team of Michelle Lutz and Breanna Black of Morris 6-3, 6-4.
Tiger tales: Lind said the absence of perennial sectional power Ottawa didn’t have much of an effect on the outcome of her team’s finishes. The only advantage she saw was the unseeded Schafer and Frank receiving a better draw than they would have ... State pairings will come out Tuesday afternoon. It’s quite possible to have girls playing at four different locations around west-surburban Chicago, Lind said, but “that’s a nice dilemma to be in.” State matches start at 9 a.m. Thursday.
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