Expectations were shifted around during last week\u2019s South Puget Sound League girls tennis tournament at Kent-Meridian High.<\/p>\n
While Kentwood was nicely surprised, advancing six girls through to the West Central District tournament, Kentridge came away a bit stunned as No. 1 singles standout Kim Quach was the lone Charger to advance. Quach snagged the third seed from No. 1 singles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hoping to get a doubles team through, too,\u201d said Kentridge coach Jennifer McIntosh, who was admittedly surprised that the Chargers advanced just one player.<\/p>\n
Kent-Meridian and Kentlake didn\u2019t advance anyone to the district tournament.<\/p>\n
The top 10 players in both singles and doubles punched tickets to this week\u2019s district tournament, which begins Wednesday at 8 a.m. at Sprinker Recreation Center in Spanaway. After the opening day, the tournament picks up again on Friday and Saturday. The top six players in singles and doubles advance to the state tournament the following week.<\/p>\n
McIntosh believes Quach has what it takes to make a return trip to the state tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s playing well,\u201d McIntosh said of Quach. \u201cShe just needs to be confident. She has a power game and she\u2019s going to have to go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kentwood certainly went with it during the tournament, pushing through an North Division-high six to the district tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was more than I expected,\u201d said Kentwood coach Ingrid Bakke. \u201cThey all had the potential to do really well and move on. Based on how tough the year was with all the good teams, it was hit or miss.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Conquerors certainly hit. Tess Manthou notched Kentwood\u2019s top seed, taking fourth after defeating Decatur\u2019s Sara Lin, 6-4, 6-4. Eliana Spero also brought home a berth in No. 1 singles, when she outlasted Kristin Houmes of Rogers (Puyallup) 6-2, 7-5.<\/p>\n
Kentwood also pushed through doubles tandems Breanna Esber and Alyssa Nagai along with Camille Madsen and Niki Skinner. Esber and Nagai doubled up on Puyallup\u2019s Kaylyn Brown and Emily Sullivan \u2013 6-3, 6-3 \u2013 in earning the No. 4 seed.<\/p>\n
Madsen and Skinner had to work a bit harder to overcome Graham-Kapowsin\u2019s Hailey Cooper and Kara Whitton. Madsen and Skinner dropped the first set 7-5, then stormed back to win 7-6 (6), 6-2 and thus earn the ninth seed to the district tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really nice. When Spero, (Skinner and Madsen) won their matches it was huge,\u201d Bakke said. \u201cIt was very gratifying because they deserved it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Expectations were shifted around during last week\u2019s South Puget Sound League girls tennis tournament at Kent-Meridian High. While Kentwood was nicely surprised, advancing six girls through to the West Central District tournament, Kentridge came away a bit stunned as No. 1 singles standout Kim Quach was the lone Charger to advance. Quach snagged the third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12217"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}