PERRYSBURG — Perrysburg girls tennis won its first Northern Lakes League championship since 2019, and the Yellow Jackets did it in near perfect fashion.
Perrysburg went 10-0 in NLL Buckeye Division dual meets, then qualified players in four of the five championship matches to win the Buckeye Division tournament at Perrysburg Tennis Center, which wrapped up Wednesday. The Yellow Jackets also finished the regular season undefeated at 15-0.
Placing first in both dual meets and the NLL tournament gave Perrysburg 20 points, followed by 2022 champion Anthony Wayne (9-1, 18 points), Sylvania Northview (8-2, 16), Findlay (5-5, 10) and Toledo Whitmer (3-7, 6).
Winning NLL individual titles was Sydney Deal at third singles, Brianna Dunham and Madi Watkins at first doubles, and Amelia Taylor and Sophia Lanno at second doubles.
Allison Barry finished as NLL runner-up at second singles and Penelope Giammarco finished third at first singles.
“It starts with all the work that they did in the offseason,” said Perrysburg coach Charles Brigode. “They really pushed each other.
“Our team is really deep compared to many of the other teams that I have coached in the past. The difference between some of our second doubles players and our first and second singles players just isn’t as much as it would be on another team.
“So, the players push each other, they support each other, and we are just happy to finish the NLL season the right way.”
Despite the depth, the Yellow Jackets have stayed with the same lineup, including the same doubles teams, most of the season, which has paid dividends.
They could try to match up with opponents like some coaches do, trying to maximize certain players’ skills against other players’ weaknesses, but Brigode stays away from that strategy.
“We do have that luxury, but we haven’t this year,” Brigode said. “We’ve had a lot of success keeping our doubles teams together this year.
“We also have Sydney Deal, who is a golfer, who is our third singles player, so we decided when she is not available for dual matches we would just move in somebody else who is not in the lineup.”
Dunham and Watkins, the top seeds, defeated Findlay’s Katelyn Stechschulte and Jocelyn Barberree, 6-1, 6-2 in the semifinals and Anthony Wayne’s Emily Szul and Mallory Rettig, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, to win the top doubles tournament.
For Dunham, this is her third year playing first doubles, and it is the second year in a row she and Watson have won the NLL tournament.
“The two of them are just very savvy tennis players,” Brigode said. “They know when to hit certain shots, when to hit other shots.
“They wait for the other team to give them the right opportunity to put the ball away. They are not going to force a bunch of shots and make a bunch of errors. They are going to be patient and make you make a bunch of errors or give them an easy shot to put away.”
Lanno and Taylor, also a top seed, defeated Findlay’s Jillian Doll and Madelline Hagedorn, 6-3, 6-1, in the semifinals and Northview’s Nivrithi Varghese and Maya Droulliard, 6-0, 6-2 in the championship.
Brigode said in the championship win, the Perrysburg duo allowed the Wildcats to make the mistakes, but that is not how they play all the time.
“Today they were really patient,” Brigode said. “They understood not to force anything today, but at other times they can poach a little bit and be very aggressive. They can adapt their game to what their opponents are giving them on any given day.
“For the two of them they like to mix things up. They will give each other hand signals, they will occasionally decide to double back even when they are doing well, and they will do an I-formation.”
Deal, a No. 2 seed, defeated Northview’s Claire LaPointe, 6-0, 6-0, in the semifinals and then downed the top seed, AW’s Harper Clifton, 6-3, 6-2 to win the championship.
“When she’s in there, she’s got huge shots, just like the (other two Perrysburg singles players),” Brigode said.
“She’s the most mentally-tough player on the team — it’s probably the golfer in her allows her to be that way.
“It’s no more than just a couple bad shots, a couple mishits, and she’s able to move right past from it. Anything her opponents do to faze her or get her rattled just doesn’t work.”
Barry, a top seed, defeated Northview’s Siya Sangwan, 6-1, 6-2, in the semifinals but lost to the No. 2 seed, AW’s Cora Langanderfer, 6-3, 6-1, in the championship. A senior, this is Barry’s second year playing No. 2 singles.
“She hits a ton of good topspin and then she’ll also will slice and move you into the net,” Brigode said.
“She’ll wait for a short ball and she likes to approach probably a bit more than some of our other singles players. But she likes to move players and set up a series of shots.”
Giammarco, a sophomore, has the toughest job of all, going against the NLL’s best at first singles.
“She’s definitely matured and progressed very nicely,” Brigode said. “A year ago, it was a lot as a freshman to go into first singles.
“Now as a sophomore, the only two matches that she lost this year were to Mara Boyd of Anthony Wayne and Maddie Peisley of Northview, which are the probably the top two players in the area.
‘She’s been steady everywhere else. She likes to be aggressive. She likes to hit winners and clinch points quickly. I still think she’s a heck of a player right now but she’s got a lot of tennis in front of her.”
Giammarco, the No. 3 seed in the NLL tournament, gave Boyd a fight in the semifinal, but lost 6-4, 6-4. In the consolation final, Giammarco easily defeated Toledo Whitmer’s Raegon Hammons 6-0, 6-0, and Findlay’s Katy Rubiolo, 6-1, 6-0, in the consolation final.
Deal plans to focus on golf in the tournament, so she will not be available to play tennis in the upcoming sectionals, but she will participate with Perrysburg in the Ohio Tennis Coaches Association team tournament.
Perrysburg defeated Findlay on Sept. 18 to begin the tournament and will take on Toledo Notre Dame at PTC on October 3 in the district semifinals. That winner will get the AW-Norwalk winner in the district finals.
