Maria Santilli ready to defend PIAA title

Tri-State Sports & News Service

Norwin senior Maria Santilli already defended one title when she repeated as the WPIAL Class 3A singles champion.

Now it’s time to defend another as the Cincinnati recruit will head to Hershey Racquet Club on Friday for the opening round of the PIAA individual championships. But winning a second consecutive state title isn’t exactly her main focus as she prepares for the trip east.

In fact, she’s much more concerned with things about six hours west.

“I feel like I approached the WPIAL week with a good attitude and that I wasn’t nervous and I was going to play my best,” Santilli said. “Now that I’m in these matches, I have to focus on what’s going to make me stronger and faster for when I get to Cincinnati so then I can start winning more when I get to college.”

Though she may be taking a big-picture view of what is to come, Santilli also knows the history of WPIAL champions at the state level. Since the state split into two classifications in 1998, a WPIAL player has appeared in every final except in 2001 when Hillary Mintz of Bensalem won the first of her two titles.

There have also been three players, Michaela Kissell of Latrobe (2003-05), Ronit Yurovsky of Plum (2010-11) and Shady Side Academy’s Ananya Dua (2014-15) who have repeated. As if the district wasn’t dominant enough, four times since 1998 there has been an all-WPIAL final and it happened in two of the last three years.

And it could happen again.

This year’s runner-up, North Allegheny’s Ava Catanzarite, is the topranked freshman in the state andhas blown through some of the best players the WPIAL has to offer. In fact, the first loss she suffered in her WPIAL career came against Santilli in the final and she would like nothing more than to get a rematch with her with a state championshipon the line.

“It would be a great experience to play her again,” Catanzarite said. “It would be great to have another chance to get the win.”

That could be problematic. The way the brackets are set up, Catanzarite might have her toughest match in either the first round against the District 12 champion of, depending on how things hake out, in the semifinals against North Allegheny teammate Ashley Huang.

“There would be lots of pressure, but we have played each other several, several times,” Catanzarite said.

“It would just come down to whoever mind-set is best because we’re both great players.”

Class 2A

Katherine Marks had her hands full with Laura Greb when she beat the Knoch freshman in to win the Section 3 singles title.

Greb, though, got her revenge on a bigger stage as she ended the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart junior’s one-year reign as WPIAL Class 2A champion with a 64, 6-1 victory in the championship match. If the two are to play a deciding third match this season, though, it will have to come in the PIAA Class 2A finals.

“I’m just going to go in with a fresh mind and ready to play,” Marks said. “I just have to shake it off and to the best I can.”

Though WPIAL singles players have done extremely well in Class 3A, it has been a completely different case in Class 2A. No WPIAL player has compete in the championship match since Quaker Valley’s Spencer Caravaggio in 2012 and only one person, Annie Houghton in 2004, has a WPIAL player won the state championship in the lowest classification.

It was also the only time two WPIAL players ever competed for a title.