Stockdale captures 6th straight title
| Thursday, Nov 13 2008 02:31 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 02:09 PM
FRESNO — Stockdale girls tennis coach Dave Hillestad paced furiously, rationalized, pleaded, even stomped a few times.
His No. 2 Mustangs had just split six singles matches with top-seeded Fresno-Bullard on Wednesday and now would need to win two of the three doubles to claim another Central Section team championship.
Turns out, he was more worked up than they were. Stockdale took the first set in all three matches and then cruised to victory in one and hung on in the other two for a 6-3 victory and a sixth consecutive section title.
“I have never been in a Valley final before, but they have,” a relieved Hillestad said afterwards. “They have handled it before, where they’ve had to win two of the doubles. But I had five in there playing that had been there, done that.”
First on the court — and first off — was Stockdale’s No. 3 doubles team, where Hillestad had gambled and moved his No. 1 player, Frances Ellison. That would leave the top two teams weaker, but it allowed Ellison, with aid from partner Ellie Greener, to control play in a 6-1, 6-1 victory.
“Ellison I knew was going to dominate, so I knew it would come down to (No. 1) doubles,” Hillestad said. “(Bullard coach David Harris) probably anticipating me putting my 1 and 2 together and maybe my 3 and 4 together. I don’t think he thought I’d be brave enough to put my No. 1 player in (the No. 3 doubles).”
As a result, the other two weren’t so comfortable. Shortly after Ellison and Greener had wrapped up their first set, the No. 1 doubles team of Julie Hutton and Brooke Meeler and the No. 2 team of Leah Stewart and Stevie Lincoln did the same.
But things went Bullard’s way in both second sets. In the No. 2 match, Pookie Gonzalez and Ashley Valdez rolled to a 6-0 win to even the match. Meanwhile, Hutton and Meeler lost two excruciating deuce games late in their match with Katherine McFeeters and Kate Abston.
And so, with both matches even, the championship would come down to two tiebreakers to 10 points as the sun set behind Bullard’s courts. Win one, and Stockdale had its sixth straight. But lose both, and the streak was over.
Those prospects were even enough to Stockdale’s unflappable players nervous.
“Oh my gosh, it was so scary watching,” Ellison said. “There’s nothing I could do but cheer. But they came through. It feels awesome. I’m so excited; I don’t even know what to say.”
But, to Ellison’s delight, Hutton and Meeler took the drama out of the situation quickly, racing to a 4-0 lead in their tiebreaker and finishing it on Meeler’s overhand volley, 10-4.
“At first I was like, ‘OK, Brooke made it. Now what?’” Hutton said. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, we won’ until she turned around and jumped up and down. I was so in that, “OK, next point, next point’ that I didn’t even realized we finished it.”
To put a cherry on top, Stewart and Lincoln erased an early deficit and won their tiebreaker a few minutes later ? eliciting loud cheers from the celebration already going on around them.
“I would have been very happy just to get two out of three,” Hillestad said. “And I didn’t want it to come down to two (tiebreakers). But it worked out.”
Ellison and Hutton got things started with straight-set victories in singles play, and Stewart added a victory in a tiebreaker at No. 3. In the last singles match, Lincoln lost a narrow tiebreaker to Bullard’s Kasey Burden, evening the match 3-3.
Hillestad, who had been at Ridgeview before coaching Stockdale’s boys last spring, said he was confident heading into the doubles, but he had reason to be nervous. He had never won a section title in 20 years of coaching boys and girls.
But it was old hat for the veteran players, who answered Hillestad’s presason challenge ? and their own ? of going out with another championship.
“There was pressure,” Hutton said. “It’s my senior year, and everyone was like, ‘We’re definitely winning it.’ There was a meeting before the season, and coach said, ‘Well, we’re going to try.’ And I said, ‘No, we will win.’”
