Perkiomen Valley’s Morris, Newman capture doubles crown
GRATERFORD >> Perkiomen Valley’s girls tennis doubles combination of Jasmine Morris and Allison Newman had been to the big dance before. The Vikings captured a second-place silver medal a year ago in the Pioneer Athletic Conference.
But this time, the Vikings’ talented duo, who were the second seeds in this year’s tournament of major upsets, held serve and staked claimed to a first-place gold medal with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Owen J. Roberts’ eighth-seeded Camryn Gelting and Delaney Kent in the final round Saturday afternoon at Perkiomen Valley High School’s courts.
Morris, a sophomore, and Newman, a junior, are two underclassmen who are part of a major brand of exceptional young girls tennis players in the circuit this fall who will be coming back to the league for several more years as well.
“We are a 1-2 punch,” said Morris. “Last year we came in second. We played doubles together during the season.”
Morris and Newman are both strong singles players, too. Both placed among the leaders in that tournament a few weeks ago. Now they have combined their talents in doubles competition and will be one of four doubles teams to advance to the District 1 Tournament, which will be played indoors at The Legacy Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Oct. 21.
“We were finishing our points quickly,” said Newman. We would always start to try to establish something and run up to the net.”
Morris and Newman are now feeling even better about themselves. Saturday’s championship granted them increased confidence, and the two Vikings will seek to carry that momentum over into the District One Tournament next week.
Morris and Newman defeated Methacton’s duo of freshman Dina Nouaime and Alejandra Castaneda in their semifinal match 7-5, 3-6, 6-4.
Owen J. Roberts also has a young combination in its runner-up combination of Kent, a freshman, and Gelting, a junior.
“We have not played together before,” said Kent, who is also a lacrosse player but will not concentrate solely on tennis for the 2015-16 season.
“It took us a little while to get started,” said Gelting. “We knocked off the first seed and teams that were seeded above us. We played smart.”
During the morning semifinals, Gelting/Kent defeated Spring-Ford’s duo of freshman Tori Alexander and sophomore Bianca Caresosa, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5. Alexander and Caresosa wound up finishing in third place with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Methacton’s sixth-seeded team of Nouaime and Castaneda.
Owen J. Roberts’ third-seeded team of sophomore Elaina Lee and freshman Jacey Caplan beat Phoenixville’s fifth-seeded tandem of freshman Julia Gumieniak and senior MacKenzie Bowes in the fifth-place match. Lee and Caplan took the fith-place match 8-5. Earlier, the Phoenixville girls knocked off the returning champions and number one seeded Methacton girls in a pro-set.
“The girls played well,” said Phoenixville coach Ryan Curley. “They got the big one against Methacton.”
During the quarterfinals, Gelting and Kent upended Methacton’s number one team and top-seeded Paige MacDougall and Amanda Amornwichet in a three-set match. The scores were 2-6, 7-6 (8-6 tiebreaker), 6-3.
Morris and Newman defeated Spring-Ford’s second team of seventh-seeded Sonal Tyagi and Caitlyn Hart, both juniors, in their quarterfinal match. That score was 6-1, 6-1.
In the fifth-place playoffs, Gumieniak and Bowes bested MacDougall and Amornwichet 8-4. Elaina Lee and Caplan topped won an 8-6 match against Tyagi and Hart.
In the finals, Perkiomen Valley and Owen J. Roberts were tied at 2-all in the first set. The Vikings then ran off wins in three straight games to go ahead 5-2 and then finished strong with a deuce game to win the first set 6-3.
There were numerous good volleys by both sides in the championship match with Morris and Newman prevailing with some strong shots at various key points in the match.
In the second set, Perkiomen Valley went ahead 3-2 in the early going and then stretched that margin to 5-2 in two games that both went to deuce several times.
At the conclusion of the tournament, both the PAC-10 Girls Singles medal winners and the Doubles Medal winners were presented with their medals. The PAC-10 Singles champion was Meredith Lee of Owen J. Roberts with Mihaela Codreanu of Methacton taking second. Spring-Ford’s Alexander finished third with Phoenixville’s Gumieniak fourth and Methacton’s Nouaime fifth.
