With another battle of the Park Hills in the record books, the Lady Trojans’ tennis team came out on top of the Lady Panthers, 5-3, in the Class 3 District 8 Championship.
In the district championship, the doubles teams played on Oct. 6 and the singles matches were on Oct. 7. Unlike the regular season, the athletes play best two out of three in the singles matches with a tiebreaker third set if it the sets are split.
The overall match came down to the wire as the final tiebreaker was between the number six players in the singles match of the championship. Park Hill’s Sydney Robertson trailed Park Hill South senior Camille Verhoeven the entire match, but the Trojan junior scored eight straight points to pull out the match, 10-8, to give the Trojans a district title.
“I tell the girls that every year we get a chance to write another page and each page is different, so they have a chance to leave their mark and legacy on the program,” Park Hill head coach Tim Kalis said. “Words can’t express how deserving these girls are to do this and how amazing it is to do it against such a well-coached and talented Park Hill South team.”
Park Hill won two of the three doubles matches starting with Elizabeth Ericksen and Caselie Petrillo defeating Sydney Dial and Kate Eason, 8-5. The Trojan doubles team of Audrey Lynn and Robertson took down Panthers Elizabeth Eason and Verhoeven by a score of 8-2.
The Park Hill girls’ tennis team defeated Park Hill South 5-3 in the Class 3 District 8 Championship on Oct. 7-8.
Park Hill South’s top doubles team of Vivien Hamilton and Hana Bytyqi were the only Panther doubles team to win as they defeated Madison Whalen and Katie Miller 8-3. In the singles match between the number one players, Hamilton and Whalen, Park Hill South won 6-3 and 6-2.
The Panthers won the next singles match as well when Dial defeated Ericksen by scores of 6-3 and 6-0. Park Hill won the next two singles matches when Lynn defeated Bytaqi and Elizabeth Eason fell to Petrillo, 6-0 in both sets.
In the district championship, as soon as one of the teams reaches five wins, play stops. Kate Eason and Miller did not finish their singles match since the tiebreaker of Robertson and Verhoeven ended giving the Trojans five wins in the Class 3 District 8 Championship.
“They have a lot of depth; they are extremely talented and experienced at the top, so we knew it was going to have to come down to the lower half of the lineup. It was a total team effort; every spot matters, and it couldn’t be any closer or sweeter,” Kalis said.