PORTLAND — Rivals in the Mountain Valley Conference, Winthrop and Spruce Mountain were two peas in a pod at the Western Maine regional tennis finals at the Racket and Fitness Center.
Both girls’ squads are filled with players who rarely — if ever — play indoors, and neither team had faced an opponent with the speed and depth they each saw Thursday.
Top-seeded Greely High School, taking advantage of eight-time champion Falmouth’s departure to Class A, breezed through the bracket this week, capping off their first Western Class B title with a 5-0 win over the Phoenix.
“We’ve known this was an opportunity for us from the beginning of the year,” Greely coach Ben Caswell said. “We set a goal to get to this regional final, and see where we could go from there.”
In Class C, it was perennial power Waynflete that cruised to a 5-0 win over the Ramblers to capture its fourth consecutive Western C crown. Greely will face Waterville in Saturday’s girls’ Class B state final, looking for its first tennis title, while the Flyers will look to make it four wins in a row in the season’s final match when they take on Van Buren in a rematch of last year’s final.
The Rangers’ match pitted a pair of teams that knew nothing of each other. Spruce Mountain competes in the MVC, primarily against Class C schools, and had faced only teams from the Kennebec Valley Athletic Association in its first two playoff games, wins at No. 3 Lincoln Academy and No. 2 Maranacook.
Greely, meanwhile, lost one match all season on its Western Maine Conference schedule — against newly-minted Class A favorite and former Class B juggernaut Falmouth.
Despite the lopsided scores, the Phoenix extended many of their games against the Rangers to deuce and beyond.
“This was the third year for Spruce Mountain as a combined team, and it’s the first year we made it out of the first round of the playoffs,” Spruce Mountain coach LeeAnna Lavoie said. “The girls did a great job all season.”
Alex Tebbs of Greely clinched the match at third singles, sealing a 6-0, 6-2 win over Samantha Richards.
The Ramblers had a bit of a tougher go at it, especially early on.
“They just don’t seem to play as well indoors,” Winthrop coach Jess Merrill said. “It’s a much faster surface, and when they are already hitting the ball faster, we knew that was going to go against us. I think it kind of caught the girls off guard a bit.”
Emmah Spahr rebounded in the second set to keep it close at 6-4. Celeste Hannum and Kayley Choate fought for three games in their second set at first doubles, while Corinna Coulton and Sarah Spahr took five games over two sets at second doubles.
But Waynflete’s speed and precision were just too much.
“It was too late,” Merrill said. “The girls started to come back in a few matches, but it was too late.”
Neither Winthrop (seeded fourth in Western C) nor Spruce Mountain (sixth in Western B) began their playoff runs with expectations of a regional crown. Both young squads left Portland on Thursday toting runner-up plaques, with the promise of a not-so-distant return.
“To come from where we started, we built all season long,” Merrill said. “We flew under the radar … I think a lot of people were surprised we were here.”
Waynflete, Cape boys sweep
In the ultimate definition of reloading rather than rebuilding, Waynflete’s quest for a seventh consecutive Class C state tennis crown is still alive after a convincing 5-0 win over a short-handed North Yarmouth Academy squad Thursday at the Racket and Fitness Center.
“Winning never gets old,” Waynflete coach Jeff Madore said. “We have a good group of guys, and they have a lot of fun.”
The Flyers were spotted a pair of match victories at third singles and second doubles because NYA couldn’t field a complete team. That left the Flyers needing just one victory in each of the three remaining matches to earn a trip to Saturday’s state final.
They got wins in all three remaining matches to post the 5-0 sweep.
“We’ve been fortunate to have some good players,” Madore said. “They’ve gotten better over the season, too. We got smoked by Cape the first time out, and then later in the season we almost beat Falmouth. They’ve worked hard, and it makes a difference.”
In Class B, top seed Cape Elizabeth downed Yarmouth to earn its second consecutive regional crown. All five matches were completed in straight sets.
Falmouth sweeps Class A
New class, same result for the Falmouth girls, while the Falmouth boys are also looking to complete a rare, three-class sweep.
The Falmouth teams, competing in Class A this season’s playoffs after playing a mostly-Class B schedule in the WMC this season, have won multiple titles in Classes C and B, with the girls vacating a title in Class B this season they’d held for six consecutive seasons.
Both made short work of their new Class A rivals, both of which had also gone unbeaten in the all-Class A SMAA.
The Falmouth boys dispatched Deering, 5-0, and the Falmouth girls did the same to Portland.
The girls will square off against Brunswick on Saturday in the Class A girls’ final, while the Yachtsmen’s boys’ team will face Mt. Ararat in the boys’ final.
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