Mt. Lebanon hoping depth is key to ending title drought
Upper St. Clair became the winningest girls tennis team in WPIAL history when the Panthers won their 15th Class 3A championship.
That win broke a tie with Mt. Lebanon and ended an 18-year title drought.
Don’t look now, but the Blue Devils may be on the brink of retying Upper St. Clair at the top of the pyramid.
Mt. Lebanon has rolled through the season undefeated, won the outright Section 4 title and racked up some impressive victories along the way. The Blue Devils have already beaten Upper St. Clair in their section match, knocked off top contender North Allegheny and handed defending Class 2A champion Sewickley Academy a rare in-season defeat.
“The season has gone well for the most part and, to be undefeated — which makes me nervous putting that out there — that’s where we are,” Mt. Lebanon coach Chad Brown said. “We’re fortunate to be there and we’ve definitely had our tests.”
Mt. Lebanon has had a solid program for decades, but the program hasn’t won the ultimate prize in 31 years. The previous time the Blue Devils won the championship, they actually shared it with Upper St. Clair in 1991.
For their most recent outright crown, they have to go all the way back to 1988, which was the final year of their WPIAL-record eight consecutive titles that Upper St. Clair matched from 19942001.
This particular iteration, though, may have enough to end more than 30 years of frustration and bring home title No. 15.
“Luckily, we’re pretty deep and you have to be pretty deep to win at high school tennis,” Brown said. “I’ve even had a couple of injuries, but luckily I’m fortunate to have that depth.”
Mt. Lebanon has a solid lineup top to bottom beginning with No. 1 singles player junior Sophia Cunningham, who qualified for the WPIAL singles tournament and took third-place finisher Sara Fernandez to a rare pro-set tiebreaker before losing, 11-10 (8-6), in the quarterfinals.
“That match was insane,” Brown said. “That was impressive for her after missing almost the first half of the season with an ankle injury.”
Behind Cunningham is sophomore Jessica Yang, who didn’t even start for the Blue Devils last year yet moved up to the No. 2 singles slot and is currently ranked No. 24 in her class in the state. At No. 3 is Jacquelyn Tang, who is the No. 18 freshman in Pennsylvania.
Mt. Lebanon also has strong doubles pairings with Carly Grant, the only senior in the lineup, paired with freshman Siyuan (Michelle)
Yang at No. 1 and sophomores Sylvie Eriksen and Elena Tatel at No. 2.
In addition, the team also has a foreign exchange student, Anna Clara Oliveira, who has spot-started in several different slots.
Still, with an undefeated regular season in the books, the challenge is preparing the team for the tournament. That could be a challenge since the Blue Devils don’t have a match scheduled in the two week break between the end of the regular season and the start of the postseason the week of Oct. 10.
“We’d like to get a match scheduled in there, but that might not be a bad thing,” Brown said. “We could have some of our best preparation just playing against each other.”
A new champion
There was a possibility coming into the season that Knoch twins Emily and Lindsey Greb could have made history.
Since the split into two classifications in 1998, they were only the second WPIAL tandem to ever win the PIAA Class 2A doubles title. With both returning for their junior years, there was the potential the two could have become the first from the district ever to repeat. It won’t happen. Emily, who was the No. 2 seed in the WPIAL singles tournament, lost in the semifinals, 6-0, 6-3, to third-seeded eventual champion Nicole Kempton of South Park. Despite the loss, she rebounded
with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Winchester Thurston’s Cecilia Gurgel in the third-place consolation match and earned a spot in the state singles tournament.
“It’s definitely different
and there’s a little more pressure because it’s totally on me now,” Emily said. “I’m excited to see what happens.”
Even so, she knows that it will be strange to break up a
state championship doubles team, especially when her partner is living in her house.
“I’m struggling with it,” Emily said. “But it’s time to do something different.”