New Trier’s Amia Ross. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER
Where there was a net, there was Michelle Capone. Or so it seemed at the Class 2A girls state tennis meet last weekend in Buffalo Grove and other sites. The New Trier sophomore doubles player felt swaying-on-a-hammock comfortable near the twine, no matter the round, no matter the point in the match.
“When I was little,” the 5-foot-11 Capone said, “I’d rush the net something like 30 times in a match.”
Capone and 5-foot-6 junior Amia Ross lost one match at state, a quarterfinal to a 3-4 seeded pair from Edwardsville on Oct. 21. The combo of Capone/Ross, seeded 5-8, won three matches before the setback and three matches after the setback, taking fifth place. They won the last trio on the final day, Oct. 22. One was easy, a 6-2, 6-1 decision.
The other two? Not so easy. They edged Stevenson’s Katherine Harvey/Paige Nierman 6-7 (3), 6-2, 10-7 (super tiebreaker) and downed 3-4 seed Carolyn Ahn/Mira Amin of Hinsdale Central 1-6, 6-2, 6-3 in the match for fifth place.
“We came together as a doubles team; we supported each other,” Ross, a first-time state qualifier, said of the three victories on Day Three, sunny and mild. “We didn’t want to experience another loss, another tough loss. It was important to overcome adversity.”
Capone’s fifth-place medal joined the sixth-place doubles medal she had garnered last fall with Catherine MacKinnon (NTHS, ’16). A nice trend. Capone’s dominant play at net played out in several points in the eighth game of the second set against Ahn/Amin. With Ross serving at 15-love and up 5-2, Capone, smart and aggressive, clinched a point with a reflex volley and later tapped an unreachable drop volley to give the Trev tandem a 40-30 lead. On set point, another Capone volley ended another point. Capone then pumped her left fist repeatedly and roared toward a bleacher filled with NT fans, who roared back.
“Michelle,” Ross said, “has the wingspan of an eagle up there at the net.”
HC jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the third set, but it didn’t feel like a 3-0 lead. To Capone/Ross. To Trevians coach Jerry Morse-Karzen.
“We should have been up 2-1,” Morse-Karzen said.
Capone/Ross won the fourth game of the decisive set and every game thereafter, six consecutive games, six consecutive exclamation points to end their first state run together.
“They complement each other,” Morse-Karzen said of the girls’ games. “Amia likes to hit powerful groundstrokes, line drives, to set up Michelle. Michelle is very competitive, into winning. I like Amia’s competitiveness, too. They started making shots [in the third set of the fifth-place match]. They hung in there.”
Ross and Capone stood side by side after their final match at state last weekend, breaking down their 2016 season and speculating on the future. They’d defeated Stevenson’s top pair twice, Loyola Academy’s top pair twice, Maine South’s top pair twice. And now this, fifth place, what their state seed had projected. Capone, as fun and carefree off the court and she is serious on it, is thinking about becoming a criminal lawyer. Just wondering: Would she have flashbacks to her competitive tennis career whenever she heard, “Order in the court”?
Ross was a third-grader when she started thinking about her life as an adult.
“I wanted to be a biomedical engineer, an inventor on the side and a mother in my free time,” said Ross, a humble and pleasant sort. “Now, today? The list of things I want to do keeps growing.”
New Trier (sixth-place tie, 13 points) finished in the top six in the team standings for the eighth straight year. The Trevians’ other state doubles entrant, seniors Natalie Kalter and Michelle Buyer, won four of six matches, and NT freshman Ali Benedetto went 1-2 in the singles draw.
Highland Park High School
The Giants also tied for sixth place (13 points) at the Class 2A state meet last weekend, getting a combined nine victories from three of its four entrants. Giants sophomore Caitlin Goldberg went 3-2 in singles, as did Devin Davidson/Halle Michael and Monique Brual/Samara Michael in doubles. HP’s Lily Tiemeyer also competed in singles.
Loyola Academy
Both of the Rambles’ doubles units battled at state last weekend. Caroline Witkowski/Maggie Hines won their first two matches, shook off a three-set loss to a pair from Stevenson and won three more matches in the back draw. LA’s Nicole Morales/Elizabeth Witkowski won three of five matches. The Ramblers (10 points) tied four other teams for 11th place.
Lake Forest High School
Each of the Scouts’ four state entrants won at least one match at the state meet. Junior Julianna Roman and freshman Nika Belova went 2-2, the second loss a heartbreaking 3-6, 6-4, 12-10 (super tiebreaker) decision to Glenbard West’s Ali Koch/Summer Johanneson. Alex Slomba and Emily Gorczynski each won a singles match, and the LFHS partnership of Salma Alsikafi and Emily Asmussen topped a Normal Community High School duo 6-1, 6-3 in the first round of the consolation bracket.
New Trier’s Michelle Capone. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER