By RYAN WALKER
Norwell’s tennis dynasty continues.
Friday night, the Norwell Knights pushed their way to another sectional championship in girls’ tennis. A 5-0 sweep over Adams Central brought the hardware back home to Ossian for the third straight season to go with six straight Northeast 8 Conference titles it got just last week.
This season might have meant more to the squad, as five of the seven in the lineup are seniors, who now get a chance at the regional for a third time.
“I think a lot of the credit goes to the girls,” head coach Holly Kimball said after the match. “They are really good about welcoming new people and they cheer for each other and respond to each other. I would love to take credit for that, but it’s really the girls that are building that dynasty. People that come in want to keep winning.”
Almost all the Knights have done is win. Counting the ones over Bellmont and Adams Central in the sectional, Norwell is now 15-3 on the season.
Macie Saalfrank breezed through No. 3 singles in under an hour, winning 6-1 and 6-0. Then, the two doubles teams finished back-to-back and clinched the sectional outright.
At No. 1 and No. 2 singles, both Addy Heyerly and Delaney Hoover had to go to work. Both won the first sets with ease, but the second set went completely opposite in favor of Adams Central.
Hoover went to a tiebreaker, winning 10-3 over Malanie Bertsch, but Heyerly’s match with Hillary Tobias had much more meaning.
At No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles, the individual or team that remains unbeaten throughout the sectional continues on their own regardless of team result.
Heyerly ended up defeating Tobias, ending the Jets’ senior’s season. Had Tobias won, she would have advanced as an individual in the tournament. The individual tournament does not extend past No. 1 singles and doubles.
For Heyerly, the win puts her in a position to advance further in the tournament if Norwell loses as a team down the road. If she would have lost to Tobias, she would have been able to play until Norwell lost.
Seniors Heyerly, Annabelle Johnson, Macy Felger, Jordyn Xayyachack and Ciera Hiester are doing what they can to push this Knights’ team to make one last run. They’re certainly getting help from second-year players Hoover and Saalfrank, who were set up to succeed under the wings of their seniors. That leadership has paid off again with more conference and sectional victories.
“The five seniors that I have this year have been around all four years and they’re really good leaders,” Kimball said. “We brought in a lot of freshmen this year and they welcomed them in right away so that their freshmen stay on, because we don’t have to replenish those girls. It’s great leadership, specifically from those seniors knowing we don’t have any juniors next year too. They’re setting a really good example for the underclassmen.”
The team will now face Manchester in the regional semifinal at Bluffton starting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, May 21. This will be the first meeting between the two teams this season.
“We know nothing about them, which is sometimes really fun because we play the same teams over and over again,” Kimball said. “So to have a new team, it’s going to be a good challenge for us. I look forward to bringing the best we got and see what we can do.”
Individual results:
• Addy Heyerly defeated Hillary Tobias 6-2, 0-6, 6-0 at No. 1 singles.
• Delaney Hoover defeated Melanie Bertsch 7-5, 2-6, 10-3 at No. 2 singles.
• Macie Saalfrank defeated Macy McClure 6-0, 6-1 at No. 3 singles.
• Annabelle Johnson and Macy Felger defeated Anna Leyse and Alexa Brotherton 6-1, 6-0 at No. 1 doubles.
• Jordyn Xayyachack and Ciera Hiester defeated Alaina Bertsch and Alayna McCullough 6-4, 6-2 at No. 2 doubles.
ryan@news-banner.com
