Sage Hill comes up just short

CLAREMONT — The match start time came and went, and the Sage Hill School girls’ tennis team was nowhere to be found.

Coach A.G. Longoria said the Lightning were a bit tardy getting to The Claremont Club for Monday’s CIF Southern Section Division IV championship match because of the bus driver.

“He said he knew a faster way,” Longoria said of the route that took Sage up Interstate 15.

But, once the No. 2-seeded Lightning got there, they sure made the match was memorable against top-seeded Academy League rival St. Margaret’s.

The Lightning nearly pulled the upset, but the Tartans rallied late for a 10-8 win.

The match wasn’t over until the final set, when the St. Margaret’s No. 1 doubles team of Hayley Miller and Hannah Hess topped Sage senior Allyson Smart and freshman Katie Bick, 6-2.

“We definitely had the talent and the heart to win it,” said Sage Hill’s Isa-Marie Taskinen, who won a pair of sets at No. 1 doubles with fellow senior Jaclyn Smrecek.

How close was the match? If it came to it, the Lightning (24-7) also might have had the games to beat St. Margaret’s (24-0).

But the Tartans’ No. 2 doubles team of seniors Mary Walsh and Allie Davis came up big in the final round. Sage Hill’s duo of Dominique Moore and Devyn Billingsley were up, 6-5, and Davis was serving at 15-40.

But Davis saved two set points and the St. Margaret’s duo rolled in the tiebreaker, 7-1, to give the Tartans their ninth set win.

“They’re both seniors, they’re both my captains, and they came through,” St. Margaret’s Coach Rick Trager said. “This is a team that has the most heart. In 22 years of coaching, I’ve never coached a team like this.”

If Moore and Billingsley had won the set either 7-5 or 7-6, the final score would have been 9-9 and Sage would have won the match on games. But the Lightning also had plenty of other chances.

They fell behind, 4-2 after the first round, when Sage lost a trio of 6-4 sets.

“We choked the first round and it put us down in the beginning,” Taskinen said. “If we would have gone 3-3 it would have been a different match.”

Sage Hill did battle back and win four sets in the second round, knotting the score at 6-6 and setting up the dramatic ending. The Lightning fought the Tartans closer than in the Academy League season, when St. Margaret’s won a pair of matches.

The Tartans won, 14-4, at home on Oct. 23 and prevailed, 10-8, ont the Lightning’s home venue on Oct. 16.

“We had the right lineup; we had the right strategy,” Longoria said. “You’ve still got to execute. We did, but they executed a little bit better than we did.”

Junior Julia Blakeley swept at No. 1 singles for Sage Hill, and senior Laney Tucker also won a singles set.

In doubles, the No. 2 team of senior Sarah Choi and freshman Katie Bick won their first two sets, but Choi suffered a cramp and Longoria substituted Smart for the final set.

Smart had also played for Choi in last week’s Division IV semifinal win over Walnut, when Choi was on a college recruiting trip. But this time, the Tartans’ Miller and Hess stood in the way.

The Academy League doubles champions didn’t lose a match all season, and they clinched the title for their team.

Sage Hill, which has been in the CIF title match three of the past four years, won it in 2005.

“It’s a good year to go out and enter the college realm,” Smrecek said. “It’s better than [losing in the quarterfinals to Walnut] last year. I would not have been happy going out like that last year.

“And,” she added with a laugh, “we still get another [patch] to put on letter jackets that we don’t have.”

 

CIF Division IV

Championship match St. Margaret’s 10, Sage Hill 8

Singles – Blakeley (SH) def. Hess, 6-1, def. Cheng, 6-0, def. Hurr, 6-0; Tucker (SH) lost, 0-6, 1-6, won, 6-1; R. Billingsley (SH) lost, 1-6, 2-6, 4-6.

Doubles – Smrecek-Taskinen (SH) lost, 4-6, won, 6-2, 6-2; (sub) Bick-Smart (SH) lost, 2-6, Choi-Bick (SH) won, 7-5, 7-6 (7-3); D. Billingsley-Moore (SH) lost, 3-6, 6-7 (1-7), 4-6.