Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rogers team claims 6A girls doubles title
Bentonville West earns school’s first state championship
SPRINGDALE — Rogers High girls tennis coach Matt Fulton admitted there were times when he had trouble watching the Class 6A state doubles championship match transpire.
The Lady Mounties team of Jenna Bohnert and Grace Lueders were pushed to the limit Wednesday before it claimed the doubles title with a 6-3, 2-6, 6-4 victory over the Bentonville West duo of Sarah Schneringer and Kristyn Tappana at the Har-Ber courts.
“It was really hard to watch because all four are extremely good players,” Fulton said. “But their nerves — you could tell they were getting to them. It was a match of errors and making good shots and went back and forth the entire time.”
The two teams even had to endure a brief rain delay, which took place with Schneringer and Tappana having a 5-2 lead in the second set. The West pair quickly closed out the second set after play resumed, but Bohnert and Lueders won the first two games and was a point away from a 3-0 cushion in the third set.
Schneringer and Tappana then bounced back in a big way to win that game, as well as the next three for a 4-2 cushion. The West duo was two points away from a 5-2 lead, then Bohnert and Lueders regrouped and eventually won the next four games, including the last two games going to deuce before they pulled it out.
“It was a roller-coaster the entire time,” Fulton said. “Neither team gave up. I was proud to see our girls win, but congratulations to West. They did a fantastic job.”
While West didn’t win the doubles title, the Lady Wolverines did claim the ultimate prize — the school’s first team state championship in its threeplus years of existence.
West, which led with seven points after Tuesday’s action was done, added two to its total earlier in the day when Schneringer and Tappana earned a 6-2, 6-3 semifinal victory over Bentonville High’s team of Olivia Roberts and Shreya Kurichety. Rogers, thanks to its doubles championship, earned the runnerup with eight points, followed by Mount St. Mary with seven and Bentonville with six.
“It’s something really special that’s hard to describe,” West coach Hunter Alexander said. “I knew we would be in the conversation after we won conference, and we would be in the hunt if we took care of the matches on day one. This is something we can really enjoy.
“You take three years ago, we had one girl that made it to state — Sarah Schneringer. We had to default matches because we didn’t have enough girls, and now we have a state championship
in 4 years. That’s huge and a testament to our girls to their passion and commitment to the program.”
The singles division, meanwhile, provided Presley Southerland the opportunity to complete some unfinished business that she had started 3 years ago.
The Mount St. Mary senior, who was a Class 7A state runnerup and overall runnerup as a freshman, returned with a flourish and won the title with a 6-2, 6-1 victory over Bentonville’s Ella Coleman.
“I had to come and finish this off,” Southerland said. “I am a senior now, and I wanted to win this thing one last time.
“I wanted to take the last match one point at a time. Sometimes I look too far ahead and think ‘I’ve got to win this one. It’s state.’ I just wanted to treat this one like any other match. It’s no different than any other match. I just went out there and tried to stay relaxed.”
Southerland, who is also an active player in junior tennis tournaments, suffered a back injury during her sophomore year, and she went on to be home-schooled for the next two years. But the itch to play high school tennis again and achieve what she didn’t do as a freshman compelled her to return to Mount St. Mary.
“At the end of my junior year, I knew I needed to go back to school,” said Southerland, who plans to play next season at Arkansas. “I was missing out on so much. I missed my friends, and I missed high school tennis because this is so much fun being part of a team. This has been so much fun, and I love it.”