Berks Catholic’s Catherine Maher captures District 3-AA tennis singles crown

HERSHEY >> Relatively unheralded as the No. 3 seed, Catherine Maher became Berks Catholic’s second District 3 singles champion in three seasons Saturday evening with a 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 defeat of Camp Hill’s Ines Fedriani, the top seed and an exchange student from Spain, in the Class AA championship match at Hershey Racquet Club.

Former Saint Lin Robertson captured the 2015 D-3 AA singles crown.

In the championship match, Maher got a break and hold midway through the third and deciding frame to close it out.

“This feels great,” Maher said. “I had beaten everyone in the county, but then to lose — to come here and win it feels really nice.”

A second seed in this spot a year ago as a junior, Maher’s run was oddly a bit under the radar this time around: She went unbeaten for Berks Catholic during the team tennis season, but dropped her Berks League championship singles match to Julia Bonds of Twin Valley earlier this month. She arrived in Hershey seeded behind Fedriani and Delone Catholic’s Elle Nuedecker. Nuedecker was stunned by Bermudian Spring’s Brooke Yurick in her first D-3 match on Friday, at Lancaster’s Racquet Club West.

Maher would defeat Yurick in the district semifinals earlier Saturday by a 6-2, 6-2 count.

“The pressure of having to understand your seed weighed on her a little bit last year,” BC girls’ coach Lauren Urban said. “So coming into today, her whole mentality was to come in with no expectations. Play for every single point, just do everything one point at a time. So, her mindset coming into this year was a lot more level-headed than in years past. That’s just been the natural progression of her game. She’s become a lot more confident in her game and her strokes.

“I could tell today that she was mentally focused and could seize the moment.”

It didn’t start out that way. Fedriani won the first three games of the title match in a swift 10 minutes. But, in a testament to that new-found level-headedness, Maher regrouped. She held twice and broke her opponent once to regain level footing at 3-3, then gained a key break at 4-all to pull ahead by a game. She closedthe first set out on serve.

Fedriani rallied to dominate the middle set, but Maher once again held her ground: A service break in her favor at 4-all in the decider was the opening she needed to deliver BC its second champion in three years.

“I think there girls are committing to playing tennis all year round,” Urban said, not only of her squad but Berks County tennis on the whole. “And when they are committed to that, that shows in their games. I think the relationships between the top girls — and boys — in our county is so strong, that they better each other.”

Including Class AAA, four of the last six singles champions have hailed from Berks: Maher, Robertson and Exeter’s Sammy Snyder, who was a two-time champion in 2015-16.

Maher and Fedriani will be joined at states by Susquehanna Township’s Brenna Trkula, who won the third-place qualifying match.

In Saturday’s AAA title match, Hempfield’s Amanda Hegino defeated Manheim Township’s Taylor Kopan 6-2, 6-4. It was Hegino’s first district title and gave Hempfield its first district singles champion since 2006.  Kopan’s teammate, Kate Moore, will join them at states by virtue of winning that bracket’s third-place match.