Tuesday, September 27, 2011

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

A day after winning a county title at third singles, Jackie Herssens gave her team its first point of the match in Dwight-Englewood's 3-2 win over Ramapo on Monday afternoon.

FRANKLIN LAKES – It was a long weekend of tennis at the Bergen County Tournament. Play started early Saturday morning and ran well into the evening on Sunday. When the tournament officially concluded, Dwight-Englewood had won four of the five flights in the small school division and was crowned the Group 1-2 champion, while Ramapo, with county titles at third singles and first doubles, earned the Group 3-4 title. It was only fitting that the two programs met up in a regular season matchup on Monday to decide the one true county champ.

Although a little luster was taken off the mini Tournament of Champions when Ramapo's No. 1 singles player, Lisa Jouravleva, was out with an injury. Jouravleva, who was forced to default in the county final with a shoulder issue, was not yet ready to go on Monday. Ramapo had to shuffle everyone else up a spot and still put on a representative effort before falling to Dwight-Englewood, 3-2. Dwight-Englewood got its points at first and third singles and at second doubles to put a fitting bow on top of three straight days of highly competitive tennis.

“They are tired. You can tell by looking in their faces. They have a lot of homework and they are exhausted, but it is nice to see that we even with all of that and after a long weekend, that we could come up here and still battle it out,” said Courtney Baiardi, who is in her third season as Dwight-Englewood's head coach. “The counties were draining and then we came up here in the hot weather in an away match. For us to get a win against a team as good as Ramapo, it is really something for our girls to be proud of.”

Ramapo's Ariella Omar moved up to second singles and posted a 6-2, 6-2 win.

The absence of Jouravleva meant that Ramapo's singles lineup was shuffled from the bottom up. Linda Lee slotted into the third singles spot and Ariella Omar and Kate Nerlino each moved up to second and first singles, respectively. Dwight-Englewood Jackie Herssens, who won a county title at third singles over the weekend, started quickly and won the first set in love. Lee seemed to gain confidence as the second set rolled around, but it was Herssens who was first off the court with a 6-0, 6-4 victory that gave the Bulldogs their first point.

Ariella Omar is Ramapo's usual third singles player and she won a county title at the spot. But she seemed right at home when she bumped up to second singles and posted a 6-2, 6-2 win over Samantha Balanevsky, another of Dwight-Englewood's county champs.

“For some reason I didn't feel any pressure going up to second singles. I felt like everyone else might have been a little more worried about it then me, but I wasn't going to change the way I play,” said Omar. “I thought [Balanevsky] was very good, but I knew she was going to be so I just tried to stay focused on every shot. I tried to stay consistent and not just bang all the balls that came my way. That got me in trouble in the past, so I just tried to put them back in [bounds].”

At first singles, Dwight-Englewood's Lauren Urbont got a challenge in the opening set from Ramapo's Kate Nerlino, who moved up from second singles. Urbont had trouble getting her first serves in, but her ground strokes got her through to a 6-4 win in the first set. She put it all together in set No.2 and posted a 6-4, 6-0 victory that gave the Bulldogs a 2-1 lead with both doubles matches yet to be decided.

Lauren Urbont gave Dwight-Englewood a point with her 6-4, 6-0 win at first singles.

“I knew that [Nerlino] is usually their second [singles] player, but are friends and I know that we are pretty close in level, so I was expecting a good match,” said Urbont, a four-year starter at first singles. “In the first set my serve was really inconsistent; double faults all over the place. So I really tried to keep my head up on my serve and in the second set it really improved.”

Syndey Taub and Rachel Kupelian secured the winning point for Dwight-Englewood with a 6-2, 6-3 win over the Ramapo duo of Karen Ando and Rachel Swenson at second singles, but just because the outcome was decided, it didn't mean that the first singles match was not worth watching.

It was a battle of county champions as the Dwight-Englewood team of Nicole Fromer and Alexa Colas, the Group 1-2 champs, took a 4-0 lead in the opening set against the Group 3-4 championship tandem of Abby Roberts and Alison Nolte. Fromer was hitting bullets from the net as the Bulldogs raced to the early lead, but Roberts and Nolte got up to speed in time to win seven of the final eight games. They kept the momentum going and swept the second set for a 7-5, 6-0 victory.

“[Dwight-Englewood] was ranked 10th in the state and first in the county and we took them to 3-2 without our first singles player, so I just couldn't be that much more proud about what they did today,” said Kim Marchese, who lost Jouravleva over the weekend and Amanda Muliawan, the 2009 singles state champion who decided to forgo her senior season in favor of USTA events and college visits, before the season began.“At all of the positions except for second singles we were down 5-0 in the first set and they all kind of came back, recovered, and gave Dwight-Englewood a run for their money, but they are a pretty talented team and they hung on. I just couldn't be more proud of what these kids did today after a long weekend.”

Ramapo's Alison Nolte (above) and Abby Roberts came back from a 0-4 deficit in the first set to take a 7-5, 6-0 victory.

Both sides got something out Monday's match as Ramapo (6-2) showed it could hang in against a top squad with a shuffled lineup and Dwight-Englewood (6-0) showed that it could go on the road against a bigger school with a deep tradition and keep its unbeaten start intact. And the Bulldogs are on quite a roll for the past two seasons as they have taken four of the five county titles awarded to Group 1-2 schools over the last two seasons and are positioning themselves to make it one match further in the state tournament then did a year ago.

“The program is in good shape. We had 42 girls come out this year and this was the first year I had to make cuts. The depth of the team doesn't really drop after second doubles,” said Baiardi. “[With the county title] we achieved one goal and the next goal is to win the section. We went to the sectional finals last year and we lost to Newark Academy, 3-2. Hopefully we can change that this year.”

And if that does happen, nobody would be happier about it than Urbont.

“Last year we lost to Newark Academy in the finals, 3-2, and it was sort of my fault, actually,” said Urbont. “My match was so close and and I lost in a tiebreaker. That is the motivation to get back there this year and win it.”

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