Girls tennis: Fremd's Shyani's claims sectional crown
The experts always say if you want to win your March Madness basketball pool, go scratch. Pick the favorites, pick a couple random upsets, but go all one-seeds in your Final Four. That'll get you to win.
Apparently, the same goes for the Class 2A Fremd girls tennis sectional. The semifinals featured top-seeded Alina Shyani (Fremd) facing the fourth-seeded Kara Pescaru (Prospect), alongside two-seed Kaitlyn Strilich (Conant) against 3-seed Katrine Boianov (Lake Zurich). All four players advance to the state tournament that starts Thursday.
Saturday morning's finals match was between Shyani and Strilich. Top-seeded Shyani won in straight sets. The experts are imploring you: go scratch!
It was a silent match - neither girl verbally called "out," mostly because the girls didn't hit the ball out of bounds an extreme amount, and also both players would only raise her left index finger to make a call.
The ball came off the junior Shyani's racket low and fast, as if it were in a hurry to get over the net, and her quick and compact swing was mirrored by Strilich's long, smooth stroke, which produced the image of every shot being seamless. Perhaps, too seamless.
Shyani won the first set 6-2, and as the other two matches (third-place and doubles semifinals) finished up, the crowd concentrated toward the singles finals. But the rest of the match didn't take very long, as she closed Strilich out 6-2.
At a certain point in the second set, Shyani was facing a 0-30 game score and thought, "I need to calm down, or I'm gonna lose this game, and it's gonna make everything a lot harder." She won the game, and the rest was smooth sailing.
The two had actually faced each other three times earlier this year, one of them coming in the finals of last week's conference tournament.
"I think I did better last weekend," Shyani said, "but this weekend was also good. At times, I got frustrated, but I just kept going, didn't let that ruin my match."
When in doubt, she always had coach Scott Newmark to keep her going. Newmark was dressed in Fremd green from his jacket and pants, down to his shoes, and he peppered two-word phrases across the courts to his players. "Here we go! Come on! Let's go! Great ball!"
"If he was all the way on the other court," Shyani said, "I could hear him. It's motivating. It helps. It brings in more of the team-aspect into it, so I like it."
On the topic of team-aspect, Prospect ended up winning the tournament. For doubles, Fremd, Prospect, and Buffalo Grove will all have teams advancing as well.