No special treatment for South Park’s top player
Dawn Kempton and her daughter Nicole have come to an understanding about the junior’s tennis career at South Park.
“She doesn’t really like me to even watch her play,” Kempton said. “She says she’s fine and to let her go. I give her words of encouragement every once in a while and to keep her head up, but for the most part, she just goes out and takes care of business.”
For most players, that would be fine and almost every teen goes through that independent phase where they don’t want their parent looking over their shoulder. But it’s little different for Nicole, who is the No. 1 singles player at South Park and her mom is the head coach.
“It’s hard at times and it’s hard to have that divide between being a parent and a head coach,” Kempton said. “It’s one of the hardest roles to be taking on at the same time because I have to figure out during a tennis match, when am I a parent and when am I a coach? It’s very hard to watch.”
Having those two roles can be challenging at any time, but it was especially difficult in 2020.
Last season, Nicole was the No. 2 seed in the WPIAL Class 2A singles tournament and made it all the way through to the finals where she was ousted in straight sets by four-time champion Laura Greb of Knoch. In a normal year, that would have been enough to earn her a second consecutive trip to the state singles finals. But because the PIAA only took district champions, she ended up moving into the doubles tournament.
This time, she and teammate Haley Spitznagel came out of the No. 3 seed and made it into the finals, where they faced Ally and Brooke Bauer of Knoch. And, like singles, South Park lost in straight sets and, once again, did not advance.
“Last year in the WPIAL finals against Laura Greb, that was very hard to watch, knowing how bad she wanted it,” Kempton said. “I think that really left a sour taste in her mouth. She knew that if she didn’t win either one of those, she wasn’t going to states. It was a tough pill to swallow because, any other year, she finishes second in singles, she goes to states and doubles never even comes into play.”
This year, though, Nicole comes into the season as the top returning performer from last year and is currently the No. 10 junior in the state. And having her back will help the Eagles, a WPIAL team semifinalist last year, to perhaps take the next step toward the school’s first title.
“With her at No. 1 and Haley at No. 2, I’m confident they’ll win most of their matches in our section, so that puts a lot less pressure on the lineup to get that third point for the team,” Kempton said. “I think having five of the top seven return is a big motivator. They saw how far we went last year and they see where the possibility is.”
North Allegheny
It has been three years since North Allegheny won the last of its six consecutive WPIAL Class 3A titles.
Had the Tigers been able to roster every player instead of having several opt out to play independently and travel, they might be working on a nine-year streak and heading for their 10th this time around. But with the number of top-flight players opting out of playing for their high schools, those things will happen.
Despite that, North Allegheny has remained competitive and may be on the brink of returning to the top for the first time since 2018. The Tigers also had a solid run to the quarterfinals last year when they gave then-defending champion Peters Township all it could handle before they dropped a 3-2 heartbreaker.
“I think all those experiences are great building blocks for their tennis career. We learned something from that ... that we have to improve with our consistency,” North Allegheny coach Michelle Weniger said. “We have to learn to handle different types of balls, whether it’s soft, hard, lobs, whatever.”
North Allegheny will return several key players from last year, including senior Claire Zheng, juniors Emily Wincko, Abbey Swirsding, Rebecca Kolano and Eileen Hu, and sophomore Ciya Jain. Wincko competed in both the WPIAL singles and doubles tournaments last year.
Having that many experienced players back can only help if North Allegheny is to make a deep run through the postseason.
“I told the girls, there’s no easy teams on our schedule,” Weniger said. “Every single one of our matches is a challenge.”