Meagan Grant and Karina Thornton did their teammates proud on Wednesday, pulling out a gutsy tiebreak win for the Santa Barbara High girls tennis team to clinch a 10-8 victory at Harvard-Westlake, the No. 8 team in CIF Division I.
Grant and Thornton came back from a 2-5 deficit just to force a tiebreaker, where again the pair fell behind 0-4 early before rallying to win 7-5. Had they dropped the tiebreaker, the Wolverines would have won the match on overall games.
“We had several matches that we could have lost; it was definitely a high-character win,” said Dons coach Steve Geremia, also calling it a “big” upset. “Despite the fact that when we got down in the match early, we did not give up.”
Geremia highlighted another clutch match won by Ariana and Talia Hudson. The twin-sister doubles team also erased a 2-5 deficit in their final set before winning 7-5 in another must-win set.
Savannah de Montesquiou went 3-0 for Harvard-Westlake, which had its doubles teams contribute the other five set wins.
Taryn Mjelde, Grace Flintermann and Haley Galitzer pulled in two sets each in singles for Santa Barbara.
The Dons, 1-0 in Channel League play, face San Marcos on Thursday.
SANTA BARBARA 10, HARVARD-WESTLAKE 8
SB Singles – Taryn Mjelde 2-1, Grace Flintermann 2-0, Haley Hranicky-Galitzer 2-1, Lisa Sandrey 0-1. HW Singles – Savannah de Montesquiou 3-0, Selina Gengler 0-3, Margot Craske-Crutin 0-3 (all tough matches).
SB Doubles – Ariana Hudson/Talia Hudson 3-0, Savannah Fox/Kaitlyn Rodnick 0-3, Karina Thornton/Meagan Grant 1-2.
