Naperville North claims DVC title
Wheaton Warrenville South did just about everything it could at Saturday’s DuPage Valley Conference tennis tournament, but the Tigers fell just short of wresting the championship from Naperville North.
The Huskies, who went into the tournament two points ahead of the Tigers and Naperville Central, swept the four doubles matches and the Tigers took all three singles.
When the final score was tallied, Naperville North had 58.5 points and Wheaton Warrenville South had 56.5. Naperville Central was third with 51.5.
However, it was the Wheaton Warrenville South doubles field, which was filled with question marks all season, that provided the biggest excitement of the day.
Three of the Tigers doubles teams, first, third and fourth, made it to the finals by winning their semifinals matches against higher-seeded Naperville Central duos that had beaten them during the season.
And those three Tigers teams provided Naperville North’s top-seeded doubles stiff challenges in the finals.
With only the fourth-doubles result to be decided, the Tigers were still in position to walk away as conference co-champions, but Naperville North seniors Grace Deetjen and Olivia Zhu scored the decisive win a 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 nail-biter over a plucky Yasmeen Yousif and Sophia Nicols of Wheaton Warrenville South.
“It was great to go out with a victory that helped us get the conference championship,” Deetjen said. “It was our last match as Huskies and it was good to finish like that.”
The two first-year varsity players were not aware during the match that so much was riding on their result.
“They didn’t tell us until we were finished,” Zhu said. “It was good that we didn’t know. I think we held it together a little better thinking it was just a normal match.”
Wheaton Warrenville South coach Patti Clousing, whose singles players Keisha Clousing, Emma Li and Emmi Chan all won their finals matches, was particularly happy with the Tigers doubles teams.
“Give a lot of credit to our girls who worked so hard to put us in a position to win today,” Clousing said. “Usually, during the season, teams had to adjust their lineups because they wanted to avoid our singles players, but today we knew we had a chance because they had to play everyone in their normal positions. When we won those three semifinals matches it gave us a huge boost and made it an exciting day.”
Naperville North coach Heather Henricksen who has gotten used to cliff-hanging DVC finishes in both the girls and the boys tournaments, was confident that her doubles teams would hold up at the end.
“Our doubles have been carrying us all season,” Henricksen said. “That was terrific that those two seniors could take that last match that finally gave us the outright championship. Wheaton Warrenville South played a fantastic tournament, and I think we had a couple of surprises as well.”
Henricksen mentioned unseeded third singles Hannah Guenther, who picked up an all-important point by pulling an upset in her first match of the day and second singles, freshman Abbie Boswell, who mounted an outstanding challenge before falling to the highly ranked Emma Li in the finals 7-5, 7-6 (7-4).
“In all my 15 years of coaching, that was the best No. 2 singles championship match I’ve ever seen,” Henricksen said. “Abbie played fearless. She took her game to another level. She proved that she’s capable of accomplishing a lot of great things. She’s athletic, aggressive and fearless, everything you want your player to be. It was one of those great matches you never want to see end.”