Whitnall freshman rallies for win.

RACINE – As Autumn Bruno found herself falling deeper and deeper into trouble Wednesday afternoon, she simply told herself to keep pushing.

“I can come back,” she said. “because I know I can fight back, so I was fighting through the whole thing.”

The Whitnall freshman tennis player had already put together a banner year before taking the court in No. 1 singles final of the Racine Park Sectional at Racine Case. What she did over the course of about 2 hours and 15 minutes, cemented it.

Bruno, who earlier this year won the Woodland Conference No. 1 singles championship, became what is believed to be the school’s first sectional champion at No. 1 singles with a 0-6, 7-5, 11-9 victory over Divine Savior Holy Angels junior Logan White. Bruno was down 0-4 in the second set and fought off a couple of match points before rallying to beat a player who took fifth at the Division 1 state meet last season.

The performance improved Bruno’s record to 22-0 and will probably earn her a high seed at the WIAA Division 1 state meet Oct. 12-14 at Nielsen Tennis Stadium in Madison.

“Wow. I’m so proud of this girl," said Whitnall assistant Jose Rivera, who was filling in for head coach Mary Frentzel.

Bruno’s performance highlighted a meet in which Brookfield East qualified for its fourth straight state appearance and DSHA automatically qualified its top two singles players, White and sophomore Jordan Schifano.

East and the rest of the sectional team champions across the state qualified for the state team tournament Oct. 20-21 in Madison. The top four finishers in No. 1 singles and doubles and the winner of No. 2 singles and doubles automatically qualify for the individual state meet.

Bruno, therefore, had already qualified for state when she buckled down and started to come back against the Greater Metro’s champion. Normally a hard hitter, Bruno took something off her shots in an effort to eliminate the hitting errors she was experiencing and began to try different shots.

By the middle of the second set, Bruno felt she had a chance.

“I started to realize that I needed to keep playing the shots, keep it in play and not make so many mistakes, make her make the mistakes,” she said. “That what I did well.”

East, meanwhile, earned a return trip to state one year after experiencing the loss of a number of its top players due to graduation. The Spartans started the year moving its singles players one spot up in the lineup to compensate for the loss of last year’s No. 1 player.

And the cupboard was almost bare in doubles. The only player back was senior Maria Korkos, half of East’s No. 1 doubles team.

“The young players really stepped up,” East coach Linda Lied said. “Not all of them are young in age, but young as far as being on a varsity team and stepping up and playing good varsity tennis."

East junior Emily Horneffer earned an automatic berth to the state meet with her third-place finish at No. 1 singles as did Korkos and junior Julia Vitale thanks to a fourth-place finish at No. 1 doubles. Lied also hopes to have No. 2 player Allison Brankle in the field as an extra qualifier.

A couple of keys to getting the best of DSHA, was finishing ahead of it at Nos. 3 and 4 singles where senior Sabrina Zhong and freshman Emma Lo were flight champions and in doubles where East finished ahead of the Dashers at No. 1 singles and at No. 2 singles where senior Margaret Propp and sophomore Pyper Scullen finished second.

They were all riding high as they left the courts blasting DJ Khaled’s song “All I Do Is Win.”

Bruno was feeling pretty good, too. She’d just defeated one of the state’s top players, an individual she'd lost to twice previously. Now it's on to state.

“I’m very excited because this is my first time playing (on a) high school team. It’s all new to me. I’m excited. Very exciting.”