Shady Side wins doubles in thriller
Transfer Santora finally gets taste of championship
Tri-State Sports & News Service
Elle Santora found out what it was like to lose a WPIAL championship match when she dropped the Class 2A singles final as a freshman at Knoch in 2016.
Two years later and after transfering to Shady Side Academy, she knows what it’s like to be a champion.
Santora teamed with sophomore Aya Youssef to pull out a hard-fought, 7-5, 6-4 victory against the secondseeded Mars tandem of Amelia Haley and Emily Ivory at Oxford Athletic Club in Wexford. Inclement weather forced the WPIAL to move the event inside after it was initially scheduled to be played at North Allegheny.
They are the first Shady Side Academy pair to win a WPIAL doubles title since Patti Jo and Kristin Silberman took the title in 1996 when there was only one classification. It also officially ended Fox Chapel’s five-year championship run.
“I still haven’t fully accepted it and in the Triple-A division and I haven’t even thought about it because it’s too early,” Santora said. “It was still an honor to make it to the finals in Double-A singles, but this is so much more rewarding and I’m so proud of my partner and myself because this is amazing.”
Haley and Ivory were attempting to become the first Planets duo to win a WPIAL doubles title and didn’t make it easy on their Shady Side Academy foes as they battled for each point with their opponents. In the 10th game of the second set, Mars staved off five set points on their serve before the Indians finally broke to close it out.
“It was really crazy and it feels amazing because it was so tight, so it was a lot of effort getting here and this match was a lot of work,” Youssef said. “They’re a great team and both of those players are both very strong players, they were targeting us at the net, so it was a very tight match that came down to us being able to put our volleys away.”
Santora and Youssef were coming off a brutal semifinal where they knocked off topseeded Camilla Buch and Laurel Masteller of Mt. Lebanon, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3. Then the No. 4 seed rolled into the championship against a twosome that ousted thirdseeded Jenna Bell and Addison Kemerer of Latrobe.
Both teams had three-set thrillers in the semifinals but had plenty in the tank to push each other around the court before Shady Side Academy pulled out the win.
“That was an intense match and props to the opponents because they made this match so hard to win, and it could have gone either way,” Santora said. “I like the hard match and I like the speed of the ball especially indoors.”
Class 2A
Beaver’s Devyn Campbell had won the consolation match and finished in third place in the WPIAL Class 2A doubles tournament for three consecutive years. She played in a state championship final last season but had never appeared in a WPIAL championship match.
She made her final chance count.
Teamed with Anna Blum, the senior not only played in her first WPIAL doubles final but also won as the Bobcats pair rolled over fifthseeded Kasey Storkel and Abby Jo Stull of Greensburg Salem, 6-1, 6-4, to not only give Campbell her first title but Beaver its first as well.
“It’s really exciting and fun and it’s awesome,” Campbell said. “After the first set they started playing both back which at first kind of threw us off a little bit and were got a little nervous, but once we started swinging again we were fine.”