Pleasant Valley falls in D-11 team tennis quarters

CENTER VALLEY – The Southern Lehigh girls’ tennis team might not remember what it feels like to lose a match.

The Spartans dominated their Colonial League schedule, posting a 15-1 record and winning regular season and tournament titles. Their last loss was the second match of the season to Notre Dame Green Pond.

Winning is all they know. And it continued on Tuesday.

Southern Lehigh powered into the District 11 Class 3A semifinals with a dominant 5-0 win over Pleasant Valley.

“I have so much depth on this team,” said Spartans’ head coach Andraea Drabenstott. “And I think that’s really, definitely one of the reasons why we’ve been so successful this year.

“I really can rely on each and every position. I don’t have to say, ‘Oh, well in order for me to win this match, I’m gonna need one, two … I can really take any of these (girls) and really have confidence in saying, you know, I’m really confident I can get a point at all these positions.”

No. 2 seed Southern Lehigh got solid play from its top three singles players – Danielle Barnes, Michelle Li and Keelin McLoughlin. Barnes settled in to down PV’s Masani Francis 6-4, 6-1, while Li topped Haley White 6-0, 6-3 and McLoughlin ran past Riley Wagner 6-0, 6-0.

There was no drop off in doubles play, as the teams of Maddy Binder and Kayla Klecatsky, and Liz Baddoo and Erica Wang, rolled to victories.

It’s the same formula that the Spartans have used throughout the regular season, with McLoughlin winning the No. 3 singles title, and Binder and Klecatsky and Baddoo and Wang getting victories at Nos. 1 and 2 doubles at the league tournament. It worked to perfection in knocking out the seventh-seeded Bears.

“Southern Lehigh is very good, very tough, as everybody knows,” said Pleasant Valley head coach Mark Allison. “But I thought the girls played really well, I did.”

Allison liked the effort he saw from his players. White, the Bears’ No. 2 singles player, advanced to the second round of the District 11 singles tournament last week, where she gave Barnes, the No. 3 seed and the Spartans’ top singles player, a tough match before falling 6-2, 7-5.

White put up a similar fight against Li.

“I thought Haley’s match, I don’t think the score really indicated how good of a match that really was,” Allison noted. “I give her (Li) a lot of credit, because there were a lot of shots I thought Haley had that were winners, and she got to it and got them back over and placed them really well. So I give the Southern Lehigh girl a lot of credit.”

Allison also had plenty of praise for his team, which qualified for the team tournament for the first time since 2014.

“This is great,” Allison remarked. “We have two seniors (White and Francis), and the rest are all underclassmen. It’s great experience for our kids. It’s great for our school, it’s great for our team that we qualified for districts; you know how tough it is. It’s a great accomplishment.

“For me, personally, it’s the No. 1 goal of the team that I have, is to make team districts. And we did it. I’m real proud of the girls for doing that.”

DÉJÀ VU … Pleasant Valley lost 5-0 to Southern Lehigh in its last appearance in the team tournament.

UP NEXT … Southern Lehigh will face No. 3 seed Freedom today in the semifinals.

Southern Lehigh 5, Pleasant Valley 0

SINGLES

Danielle Barnes (SL) def. Masani Francis 6-4, 6-1; Michelle Li (SL) def. Haley White 6-0, 6-3; Keelin McLoughlin (SL) def. Riley Wagner 6-0, 6-0.

DOUBLES

Maddy Binder/Kayla Klecatsky (SL) def. Alyssa Wagner/Rebecca Makrides 6-2, 6-1; Liz Baddoo/Erica Wang (SL) def. Cambry Galler/Grace Vento 8-3.