Garces girls advance to tennis final
| Tuesday, Nov 03 2009 09:39 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, Nov 03 2009 09:39 PM
Winning the section title has been a season-long quest of the Garces girls tennis team. So has avenging a loss in the last year's finals to Visalia-Redwood.
Now the Rams will get a chance reach both goals after their 9-0 Central Section Division II semifinal victory over Frontier Tuesday at Bakersfield College.
With the win, Garces will travel Thursday to face the Rangers, who are led by two-time defending section singles champion Gabrielle Gatewood.
"We want to get some revenge for last year," Garces coach Barb Johnston said. "...The final score was 7-2 but we were finished after singles. All year we've been trying to prepare and set some goals for ourselves and our last big goal was to win valley."
Second-seeded Garces (26-1) had little trouble with a Titans squad that narrowly lost the Southwest Yosemite League title to perennial Division I champion Stockdale.
"Some of the scores didn't indicate how close some of the matches were," Johnston said. "They made us work. I know we won 9-0 but we had some close matches."
"We had high hopes," Frontier coach Elton Evans said. "We were hoping to pull an upset. They were just really, really tough and they prevailed. What can you say? They're a good team. I'm proud of my girls. That's just the way it is."
The best shot at victory for the Titans (24-5-2) was thwarted when Garces' No. 1 player Gracie Jacobs rallied from a 4-0 first-set deficit to beat Slovakian exchange student Danisa Hromadkova 6-4, 6-2. Hromadkova was on her game early, consistently blasting hard accurate shots for points. But Jacobs remained poised and, after a change in tactics, mounted an impressive comeback by winning eight straight games.
"I was pretty nervous," the Garces freshman said. "I just told myself I could do it. And then I changed my game a little bit and I came back. In the beginning I was just trying to hit it hard ...then I just started trying to take the pace off and maker her move and just try to get everything back, and it worked."
Abby Wattenbarger, Zoe Tucker, Carly Tucker, Crimson Hochhalter, and Annie Berry joined Jacobs to complete the singles sweep and enable Garces to clinch the team victory before doubles play began.
It's the second straight 9-0 victory for the Rams since the playoffs began, leading Johnston to believe her team is peaking at the right time.
"We've got quite a few seniors who can show the younger players and demonstrate how they need to play and the intensity they need to bring each day," Johnston said. "We just got a lot of kids that understand that every day is a new day even though you're better than a team on paper doesn't matter because the score is 0-0 when you step on the court. We have to bring that intensity every day and I think we've done a real good job of that this year."
