It was a shave closer than anything you can get from the folks at Gillette, but Northwest Cabarrus’ girls tennis team will gladly take it.
By razor-thin margins, the Trojans sliced West Rowan out of the state 3A playoff pie on Tuesday afternoon — and evening — and night.
“We went out in style, playing our game,” said West coach Mary Ann Martinelli. “I’m proud. We went down fighting against a great team.”
Northwest’s margin was a deceptively one-sided 5-1 that rendered doubles unnecessary. But this Sweet 16 rematch between the North Piedmont Conference’s No. 2 (Northwest) and No. 3 teams was tighter than Santa’s belt.
Three matches were taken to the limit — third-set tiebreakers. A fourth tussle was settled by a tiebreaker that decided the second set. On a day when thousands of balls were smacked, perhaps a dozen points broke West’s back.
“The teams are even. We know it could just as easily have been (5-1) the other way,” said gracious Northwest coach Don Cline.
“So many marathon matches,” sighed Martinelli. “We were so close.”
In the aftermath, the Falcons (14-4) were forced to juggle mixed emotions — satisfaction with an unexpectedly terrific season, disappointment that the surreal ride from who-are-these-people to region-wide respect was over.
“I feel like we could have gone further,” said West No. 1 Lauren Duffy.
But it’s Northwest (15-2) that’s earned a spot in the dual team quarterfinals. And you have to give it up for the Trojans. They won it, way more than West lost it.
West and Northwest are amazingly similar — in talent, temperament and birth certificates. Both have seniors playing 1-4. Both have sophs at 5 and 6. Maybe that explains why Northwest eked out a 5-4 regular-season win that Duffy insists was even tighter than yesterday’s encore.
At 5 p.m. — an hour into the match — the Falcons seemed certain to exact revenge at Catawba’s Johnson Center. West was in control at No. 1 and No. 6, was clearly going to win at No. 5, and held a slim edge at No. 3 and No. 4.
Yet, Northwest, on the road and with the dubious reward of facing NPC champ Statesville next, didn’t fold. At first, the Trojan comeback moved like a glacier. But then it became a snowball — appropriately, Northwest was decked out all in white — rolling straight downhill.
West’s No. 5, Ashley Graham finished early. She triumphed easily, but who could have imagined she would be both the first and final Falcon winner.
Then West’s Jennifer Kluttz lost to Yasmin Farahi, who hasn’t dropped a match at No. 2 all season. It was 1-1.
Match momentum took a U-turn at No. 6. That’s where West’s Ellen Crowell sailed through her first set 6-1, but never could finish off Danielle Wells. Wells wound up beating Crowell in a nail-biting 7-5 third-set tiebreaker for a 2-1 Trojan lead.
West doubles partners Julie Ferguson (No. 3) and Anna Brown (No. 4) played on adjacent courts and were involved in matches so strangely similar — both against Sarahs — that they may have been swinging their rackets in the twilight zone. Ferguson is tall and dark, while Brown is small and blonde, but this was like looking in a mirror. Both led early. Then both trailed. Then both fought back.
Brown lost her first set, then rallied to force the second set to a tiebreaker. She led that tiebreaker 4-0 only to see an unruffled Sarah Harkey reel off seven straight points for the match. The final point came on what may have been Brown’s only double fault of the day.
Ferguson’s match against Sarah Fleming (15-0) followed the script. After dropping the first set, Ferguson extracted the second from the fire, as she’s done so many times this fall. But Fleming didn’t rattle and grabbed the third-set tiebreaker. Match point, eerily enough, came on a rare double fault by Ferguson.
Brown had scrapped for better than 2 1/2 hours and Ferguson for a full three, but neither had anything to show — except exhaustion.
Now it was 4-1 and everyone was surging toward the hilltop court to watch the conclusion of a No. 1 donnybrook that would endure for 3 hours, 35 minutes.
West’s Duffy had dominated the first set 6-1 by imposing her will on opponent Lindsay Wood. Duffy had transformed herself into a human wall, playing strictly defense. As Duffy casually returned everything — some longer-than-War-and-Peace points went past a hundred exchanges — Wood would eventually lose patience and blast an attempted winner wide or into the net.
But Wood settled in, adjusted and ultimately won the undeclared war of nerves. She claimed the second set 6-3, then a third-set tiebreaker by 7-2 to seal the match.
“I had to change my style,” said Wood. “Last time I played her she beat me. This time I came back.”
West, though, may not come back to this level for a while. Martinelli loses six seniors — her top four, plus No. 3 doubles regular Jessica Matthews and Carly Mauldin.
Still, the memories from this super season should last the Falcon seniors a lifetime.
“I was proud of this team, of how much we all improved from when we started,” said Ferguson. “We beat Salisbury. We made the second round of playoffs. We went further than we’d ever been.”
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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com
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