Raiders repeat as tennis champs

Stowe won all three of them and, an hour or so later, was crowned champion for the second year in a row, outlasting South Burlington to win 4-3.

“I was just trying to stay in there,” top singles player Julia Biedermann said. “I was a bit worried for the team, so it was a tough one, especially when you’re tired.”

Pumping the breaks

The top-ranked Raiders beat the same second-ranked South Burlington team in the same place almost exactly a year later, and arguably the most important points came from the same two players: Charlotte Stevens and Kate Tilgner.

Playing in the No. 2 singles spot, Stevens beat the same opponent, Sage Bennett, she beat last year. Just like last year, it came in a tiebreak.

In girls’ tennis, if the match is tied after two sets, the players face off in a sudden death race to 10 points, win by two. That’s what happened in the first three singles matches, as the Raiders came back from one set down in all three matches.

Gabby Doehla, playing in the No. 3 singles spot, was the first Raider to finish off her opponent, Anna Bennett, 3-6, 6-0 (10-8). Next up was Biedermann, dispatching the Wolves’ top player, Izzy Partilo, 4-6, 6-3 (10-6).

That’s when it got really quiet, as Stevens and Bennett duked it out, swapping tiebreak points until Stevens, baseline lob after baseline lob, broke loose. She won 4-6, 6-3 (11-9).

“That’s not the way we usually want to play because it’s so tiring. But if you lose those two points, you lose the whole match, so it becomes just really about trying to not make as many errors as possible,” Stevens said.

Added Doehla, “At that point, I just didn’t want to let my team down, and the nerves were coming in.”

Up until that triple tiebreaker broke the Raiders’ way, Stowe coach Jamie Watson had been doing his typical game day routine, pacing around, nibbling his fingernails, and quietly speaking words of encouragement to his players through the diamond-shaped holes of the chain-link fence surrounding the courts.

“In these pressure moments, I’m super impressed with how they’re able to dig it out,” Watson said. “No, it’s not our best tennis of the season, but it is some of the strongest nerves of the season, for sure.”

Watson, the former boys’ tennis coach who skippered the 2019 team to victory, swapped coaching duties with Joanna Graves this season, who coached the girls to last year’s title. He said the girls take advice better than the boys.

“The boys will sometimes be, like, ‘I got this.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s love-six, one-five. I’ve gotta give you some tips or you’re off the court,’” Watson said. “And the girls will be five-love and say, ‘Tell me something.’”

Down to the wire

South Burlington’s longtime coach Jake Landa knew it was only 3-1 after that tiebreak and there were plenty of matches left — and indeed, South Burlington would win both doubles matches and the fifth singles match. But there was a whiff of inevitability after that intense triple header tiebreak marathon.

Watson felt it, too, saying his No. 4 player, Tilgner, had specifically asked to play in the four-spot, because she wanted to chance to feel the pressure, to be asked to win it all. After all, she did the same thing last year.

By this point, the doubles matches had already fallen South Burlington’s way — Lilla Erdos and Wynnie Adamson over Annabel Stevens and Parker Reeves 7-6 (7-5), 6-2; and Ivy Howard and Melissa Rosowsky over Lucy Andrus and Carly Miller 6-0, 6-0.

Then Stowe’s No. 5 singles player, Anna Isselhardt, went down in straight sets to Ella Maynard 6-0, 6-2. Isselhardt, a Peoples Academy player, was summoned at the last minute after usual five-spotter Morgan McKenna scratched after catching COVID-19. McKenna watched the action from a hundred feet away, standing next to her car, wearing a mask and holding up a hand-drawn poster to support her teammates.

The state championship was knotted up at 3-3. Yet, there’s something about inevitability that’s just so … inevitable.

Players from both schools in earlier action had been much more aggressive in their non-tiebreak sets — Biedermann might as well have been an English professor with the amount of topspin she put on her early returns at Partilo, and Doehla and Stevens got in plenty of potent slams at the net — before settling into their lob-fest third sets, pushing the ball lest they go down two points.

Watson noted that Tilgner, on the other hand, likes to keep things slow from the get-go, playing with patience and wearing her opponents down. That also appeared to be the style favored by Tilgner’s opponent, Tenzin Tselha, as the two final players traded epic volleys and chased down long balls that landed just inches inside the paint. It’s hypnotizing for players and fans alike — one of the volleys between Tilgner and Tselha lasted more than 50 shots before someone blinked.

In the end, Tselha blinked more, as Tilgner beat her in two straight sets, 6-2, 6-2.

“I think I kind of like the pressure on me because it just motivates you,” Tilgner said. “That girl made me run a lot, and every time I wanted to give up on a ball, I heard the people behind me, and I was, like, ‘I have to go get this ball.’”

Landa said Stowe and South Burlington have developed a great rivalry over the past couple of years, but he thinks it’ll be tough for his team to get back to the pinnacle next year. The Wolves graduated most of its best players over the weekend.

“We played a lot with the JV this year to try to get them up to speed, and they’re still not there,” Landa said.

On the other hand, the four singles players who scored points for Stowe — Biedermann, Charlotte Stevens, Doehla and Tilgner — are all sophomores. Only two seniors, Miller and Annabel Stevens, graduated this weekend.

“If any of these girls wanted to take it seriously and put college tennis on their radar, they could,” Watson said. “If I could help on that journey, I’d be more than willing to.”