After falling behind by three games in the second set of her No. 3 singles match against Waynflete’s Sidara Cash-Sortwell, Kramer settled herself down.
“Some shots are just going to go out, and in those three games, that happened,” Kramer said. “I got irritated, then, after I lost the third game, I told myself, ‘I really don’t want this to go to a third set. I can turn it around. I can do it. I can turn it around and do it for the team.’”
A calmer Kramer rattled off wins in six consecutive games to earn a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Cash-Sortwell for the Saints’ third team point, clinching for St. Dom’s a 4-1 win in the Class C South regional final at the Wallach Tennis Complex at Bates College.
“(Kramer has) become such a smart player over the year, she’s been able to figure it out when she gets into little pickles like that,” St. Dom’s coach Andrew Girouard said. “It took her three games to get back into rhythm, but once she did, she was fine.”
And, Kramer said, she’d be lying if she diode;t admit to following the scores of the matches around her.
“It impacts me a lot, but I try not to let it,” Kramer said. “At the beginning of the set, I looked down to line, and I could see who’s winning and who’s losing, and I got really freaked out, like, ‘What if I am the deciding match?’ The same happened in the second set. I looked over and saw (first doubles) looked like they were doing well in the second set, and I saw Rachel (Kurtz) had won at No. 2 singles.”
“(Cash-Sortwell) seemed to find her rhythm there, but that was a good job from Clare to come back and take it over again,” Waynflete coach Linda Cohen said.
The Flyers, who play a tough-as-nails schedule in the Western Maine Conference against some of the top teams in the state across all three classes, were also a bit shorthanded Thursday, with some regulars in the lineup away on a trip to China. This season, Waynflete competed against Southern Class B finalists York and Cape Elizabeth, and Class A finalist Falmouth.
Thursday, all four initial matches (the top singles players are sent out last) were tight early, but Kurtz was the first to pull away for the Saints at No. 2 singles. The No. 1 doubles team of Cassandra Stacy and K.K. Linck followed shortly thereafter.
“Our coaches always emphasize how important it is that doubles win,” Linck said. “We’re a strong team, and those are the wins we need to get. Always having Bethany (Hammond) at the No. 1 position helps a lot, too, so if we can win our two doubles points, we feel pretty good about it.”
Link and Stacy used a strong net game to overpower the Waynflete team of Randall Sader and Hana Delaney.
“The coaches have focused on that with us,” Linck said. “That’s definitely a strong part of our game, and they want us to be very aggressive at the net. It kind of offsets our opponent a bit. We’ve definitely worked a lot on that in practice, staying with the ball at net. We feel like that’s one of our advantages. (Stacy’s) height, and our aggressiveness, it keeps the other team unbalanced and timid against us.”
And, of course, the Saints had a little bit of extra motivation: Waynflete had narrowly knocked St. Dom’s from the playoffs a year ago, 3-2.
“This year was kind of like redemption,” Stacy said.
Kramer followed with her match win at No. 3 singles to push the Saints to their first state final since 1995. This year will also mark only the second time since 1998 that a team other than North Yarmouth Academy or Waynflete will represent the West/South at the Class C state final. Winthrop, in 2005, won a state crown. The team from the West/South has also won each state title in that stretch, with NYA earning nine, and Waynflete seven.
“Most of us have been playing together from freshman year, and we’ve had this goal in mind the whole time, but we always seem to fall in the semifinals,” Kramer said. “Now we made it to finals, so we were like, ‘OK, let’s make it to states.’ We’re just taking it one step at a time and this was the next step.”
“Our girls have worked incredibly hard from Day 1,” Girouard said. “We lost to Waynflete last year in the semis, 3-2, and that was a big motivation for us, if we saw them again in the playoffs, this was the match they wanted to show up for.”
St. Dom’s and Waynflete will definitely have a chance for a rematch next season, when St. Dom’s rejoins the Western Maine Conference after several years in the Mountain Valley Conference.
“They have a very nice, solid team,” Cohen said. “Hopefully we’ll be back and vying for it next year.”
The Saints face Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln in the Class C state final Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at Bates College.
Waynflete boys sweep Hall-Dale
For the first time ever, Hall-Dale snagged a set against a Waynflete player Thursday, but one set wasn’t going to be enough.
The Flyers swept through the Bulldogs’ lineup to earn a 5-0 victory in the Class C South boys’ regional final, sending them back to the state final in search of an ninth consecutive Class C crown. They will again face George Stevens Academy in the final, a familiar foe. Waynflete has defeated George Stevens in the state final in eight of the past 10 seasons.
Jacob Crockett of Hall-Dale won the first set against Shuhao Liu at No. 3 singles before Liu rallied to win the second and third sets.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
