The George Mason High School girls varsity tennis team rallied from a large deficit and surged into the Region B Finals, winning 5-4 over Wilson Memorial Tuesday afternoon.
Wilson Memorial, entering the match with an undefeated record of 14-0, claimed four consecutive singles wins after Mason’s Michelle Repper and Kelsey Kane put Mason ahead 2-0. Now with the match standing at 4-2, the defending regional champion Mustangs needed to win all three doubles matches to advance.
And that’s exactly what they did.
Mason’s No. 1 doubles tandem of Repper and Annie Zweighaft won their match 7-5, 6-3, while the No. 2 pairing of Kane and Claire Sedmak evened the overall match with a 6-3, 6-2 win. That shifted the decisive contest to the No. 3 doubles court, where Isis Hanna and Claire Pribulka swept the first set 6-0 and then won the final nine points of a second-set tie breaker to prevail and allow Mason to advance.
“Claire Pribulka is so aggressive at the net. She just overwhelms teams up there,” Madison said. “And Isis Hanna is so steady from the baseline.”
The balance has allowed that tandem to go undefeated thus far in 2008.
The Tuesday win sets up a match against Goochland in the Region B Finals for the third straight season. While Mason has won the previous two meetings to advance to the state tournament in Radford, Va., Madison expects this meeting to be the toughest one yet.
“They have all the motivation in the world,” Madison said. “They are at home and they want it bad. We have been the only thing that has stood in their way of a regional championship and they would love to break through.”
In the Region B girls doubles tournament, Repper and Zweighaft breezed through the bracket to claim the regional title and advance to the State Tournament.
The duo’s lone speed bump came early, slipping behind 0-3 against the pair from Wilson Memorial. However, Repper and Zweighaft halted their skid to claim the first set, 6-4, and then took the second, 6-2.
Repper paced the pair in the final with six aces and Zweighaft controlled the net in a 6-2, 6-2 win.
The state tournament begins next Friday, June 7 at Radford University.
