Exeter duo snag silver at districts
Eagles’ Grohoski, Cramer qualify for states
Exeter’s Corine Grohoski and Alexis Cramer fell just short of reaching the District 3 summit in doubles tennis, but their season is not over.
Grohoski and Cramer reached the finals of the D-3 Class AAA doubles tournament in Hershey on Saturday before settling for silver, after falling in the title match to the topseeded duo of Kate Moore and Julia Darkey from Manheim Township 6-2, 7-5, at Hershey Racquet Club.
It was quite a week in Chocolatetown for Exeter’s doubles tandem and their Eagles teammates. On Thursday, the Eagles clinched the final spot in the team tennis PIAA tournament when they defeated Dallastown 3-2 in a tense match.
Two days later, Grohoski and Cramer returned to finish out their doubles quest with a pair of matches, the first against the homestanding Hershey duo of Megan Lewis and Chandi Desai in the AAA semifinals. Grohoski and Cramer delivered with 6-1, 7-5 victory to clinch a return trip to states by way of making the finals. They finished third a year ago in the same spot.
“It’s amazing,” Cramer, a sophomore, said of the day. “Great experience. I get to come back with the same girl again.”
Grohoski, a senior, put it bigpicture terms when she looked ahead to states: “Last year, by winning third (at D-3) we drew the best team at states (North Allegheny). We’ve been playing our best tennis for the past three week, so yeah, I think we can (make a run).”
After dispatching of Hershey in a tougher-than-the-final-score semifinal match, the
No. 2 seed pairing came out flat against MT’s Moore and Darkey. The Blue Streaks raced to a first-set win in 35 minutes.
The set break enabled Grohoski and Cramer to regroup, however, and what emerged was a more aggressive and more confident tan-
dem who nearly pushed the second stanza to its limit. With a sharper focus and better net play, they pulled even at 5-all before dropping the final two games and with it, the match.
“The first set, the mistakes were from us,” Grohoski said. “We weren’t being as consistent as them. The second set, we were more consistent and tried to force them to make a mistake before us. We attacked
more. The first set, we were backing off.”
The roles were somewhat reversed in the Hershey match, with Exeter jumping out to a quick first-set win before the Trojan rallied to make things interesting in the second set. Down 4-5 in that frame, Grohoski and Cramer held twice and broke once to cobble together a quick threegame streak and sneak off in straight sets.