Patient Wang ensures win
Peters Township ace fends off heat from Fox Chapel in thrilling finale
There was nothing unusual about the WPIAL playing its team championships at Alpha Tennis Club in Harmarville.
Over the years, the district has used the facility on multiple occasions.
This time, though, there was a glitch. There were only three courts available for the finals between Fox Chapel and Peters Township. Instead of just throwing the three singles matches out on the court, however, the coaches opted to draw the order out of a hat.
Peters Township’s Kat Wang could not have been more disappointed.
“I really wanted to play first just to get it over with,” Wang, the Indians sophomore No. 2 singles player said. “It was really pressuring. This was the most pressure that I had ever felt before in my life.”
Instead of getting her match against Fox Chapel’s Carissa Shepard in quickly and watching the rest of the finals unfold, she sat and waited. When she ended up on the court, the match between the two was tied and the title was on her racket.
And, after a grueling twohour match, Wang clinched the Indians’ first team title since 2012 and fifth in school history with a 6-3, 0-6, 6-3, victory against Shepard that clinched a 3-2 win over the Foxes.
“I kind of thought Kat could handle it if she came on last,” Peters Township coach Phyllis Derienzo said. “Look what she had to do and look what she had to build on. That builds character.”
Wang appeared to be in total control after she won the first set before the wheels came off in the second. She could not get her serve in, she was regularly long to the baseline and she committed several key unforced errors.
While Wang struggled, Shepard pounced. She took advantage of Wang’s difficulties and ripped off seven consecutive games to win the second set and go up a break, 1-0, to start the third.
“I was trying to stay as calm as possible, but losing that many games in a row is pretty discouraging, obviously,” Wang said. “My head was just not in it, I was not focused, my feet were not moving, and I couldn’t really will myself to do it.”
Wang appeared down for the count and might have thrown in the towel had Shepard held serve. Instead, Wang broke Shepard in all four of her service games in the set and, after being broken twice herself, held in the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead and pulled it out.
“In tennis, the pecking order is very strong and, for 10 days, we really tried it get her to believe that she was the favorite,” Fox Chapel coach Alex Slezak said of Shepard. “But Kat just played really well on some tight things and things didn’t go our way.”
Class 2A
Sewickley Academy junior Evelyn Safar and Knoch’s Laura Greb never have played each other in the WPIAL Class 2A singles tournament.
That is because Safar opted against competing, and Greb subsequently won her third consecutive title.
Instead, the two have kept their battles limited to the WPIAL team finals where Safar had a pair of straight-set wins the previous two years. And though this time it went three sets, the end result was the same as the Panthers’ No. 1 player pulled out a 7-5, 2-6, 63 victory in what turned out to be the clinching match of a 3-2 win against the Knights that gave Sewickley Academy its third consecutive team title and seventh in school history.
“It was a battle on the court, I have to say,” Knoch coach Nance Conlon said. “This year, coming down to the No. 1 on the final court, Evelyn and Laura are both strong players, and it basically came down to one game.”
And it could have gone the other way. Safar staved off two set points in the first set before she pulled it out to change the complexion of the match.
“It definitely was a fight on the court,” Conlon said. “It was anybody’s game.”