The No. 1-seeded Santa Barbara girls tennis team completed the second leg of a three stage race to the CIF finals by defeating Newport Harbor 11-5 on the Dons’ home courts on Wednesday in a match that was shortened because of darkness.
The quarterfinal win means Santa Barbara has to travel to Palm Desert on Thursday for the Div. II semifinal, which will be its third match in as many days after their second-round match with Diamond Bar was postponed from Saturday until Tuesday because of the Southern California wild fires.
“We have a great great group of senior girls here that I know want to end strong and so does everyone else here,” said junior Hanna Grokenberger, who, with partner Kinzie McKeown, led the Dons’ doubles side to eight wins and control of the match. “Next year we’ll be losing a couple of girls and it will be hard, so, this is the year.”
The senior tandem of April Ludwick and Zoe Miller swept their sets, including a final-set tiebreaker over Newport’s No. 1 team Natalie Small and Geanne Frei. Haley Hranicky-Galitzer and Ari Beckerman scored two sets for the Dons.
Grokenberger and McKeown, the Channel League champions who will be competing in CIF individuals this weekend, dropped their first game in CIF play. But only one as the duo won its sets 6-1, 6-0, 6-0.
“We’re going to the semifinals, that’s good enough,” McKeown said.
“I knew they were deep, especially in doubles,” Newport coach Kristen Case said after the match. “It showed today.”
The 11-5 unusual score came about because darkness was fast approaching and the match was already decided, so two singles sets were not played.
The doubles side was near-perfect, but it didn’t have to face Newport Harbor’s No. 1 singles player Nellie Radeva, who will be playing at Cal next year. Radeva went 2-0, completing a perfect season.
The Dons’ Rachel Decker-Sadowski made it hard on her, fighting back from a 2-5 deficit to get within a game at 4-5 before Radeva held serve to close out the set. Decker-Sadowski’s two wins in her other sets were all Santa Barbara needed to clinch the victory.
“That match could have gone either way,” said head coach Steve Geremia, who expects similar talent during the next two stages of CIF.
SANTA BARBARA 11, NEWPORT HARBOR 5
(Match shortened due to darkness)
SB Singles: Decker-Sadowski 2-1, Broida 0-2, Garrison 1-1. SB Doubles: Grokenberger-McKeown 3-0, Miller-Ludwick 3-0, Beckerman-Hranicky-Galitzer 2-1. NH Singles: Radeva 2-0, Cramer 1-1, Arnold 1-2. NH Doubles: Small-Frei , Conway-Waterman , Aiello-Mathies Records: SB 16-4, NH 18-4
