PIAA title icing on the cake for Fox Chapel’s Nord
Tri-State Sports & News Service
Amanda Nord never saw herself as a player who would make WPIAL and PIAA tennis history when she first took the court for the Fox Chapel varsity team in 2014.
“I honestly would not have believed that,” Nord said. “I was fortunate enough to have been paired with Charlotte and Laurel to get that place, but if they had told me four years ago that this would have happened I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Nord wrapped up her varsitycareer Saturday when she paired with sophomore Charlotte James to win their second PIAA Class 3A doubles title. In 2014, she and partner Laurel Shymansky, who is currently at Duquesne, lost in the state finals before coming backto win the championship ayear later.
Since the PIAA split into two classifications for the 1998 season, Nord is the only player to appear in four state championship matches and win three consecutive PIAA titles.
“I just think that the last four years there’s been a lot of growth for me as a tennis player starting off freshman year. That’s the best way I can put it,” Nord said. “I’ve grown into a player and a person competing on this tennis team.”
Class 2A singles
It had been five years since a WPIAL singles player made an appearance in the PIAA Class 2A title match before Knoch freshman and reigning WPIAL champion Laura Greb rolled to three straight-sets victories to get a chance at 2016 state runner-up Brenna Magliochetti of Bethlehem Catholic.
Though Greb lost, 6-2, 7-6 (7-5), she joins some elite company as only six other WPIAL players have ever played in a PIAA Class 2A singles final since the classification was established in 1998.
Of the previous six, only one, Beaver’s Alexandra Kaluza, was not a WPIAL champion that year. She was the runner-up in both the WPIAL and PIAA finals to Quaker Valley’s Annie Houghton in 2004, who remains the only WPIAL player to win the state championship in Class 2A.
Class 2A doubles
It didn’t take a WPIAL champion to make it into the PIAA Class 2A doubles championship mach.
Or a runner-up for that matter.
No, seemingly the most unlikely tandem of Sydni Lewis and Devyn Campbell of Beaver, the third-place finishers in the WPIAL doubles tournament, became the lowest District 7 seed ever to make it into a state final in Class 2A. Then again, maybe they were the most likely to make it.
It’s fairly rare to have doubles teams stay together from one year to the next because of singles success or graduation. Lewis and Campbell, though, made it into the state tournament as a team in 2016 and Campbell was also in Hershey with Moriah Bridges as a freshman in 2015.
One thing they could not do, however, was bring home the WPIAL’s first title since 2011 as they dropped a 6-3, 6-1 decision to District 10 champions Sarah DeMarco and Tara Thomas of Villa Maria Academy.
Of note
This year was the first time since 2007 the WPIAL had finalists in both the singles and doubles events in both classifications. That season the district brought home three state titles as Lauren Greco of Shady Side Academy won Class 3A singles, Julie Stroyne and Emily Palko of Peters Township won Class 3A doubles and Karli and Tonya Timko of Chartiers-Houston won Class 2A doubles.