Plymouth takes NLC tourney, conf. title
PLYMOUTH — After three straight days of tennis under hot and humid conditions, the Plymouth High School girls tennis team earned the Northern Lakes Conference championship after the completion of the NLC tourney Friday at the Mary Beth Hunter Tennis Complex.
Actually, the Lady Pilgrims won it on Day 2, but more on that later.
Going into the season-ending tourney that started Wednesday, Plymouth and Warsaw were tied with 7.5 points
each after going 6-1 during the NLC regular season round-robin play. Northwood and Northridge were tied for third with 5.5 points. But after securing spots in four of the five championship matches during Thursday’s semifinal round, it was mathematically impossible for any other team to catch the Lady Pilgrims.
“We had an extremely good day (Thursday),” said Plymouth head coach Brad Haeck. “Now we always teach about being unselfish, but (Friday) is a time we want to be selfish, play well and still win. Even though we knew we had won as a team (before playing the final matches), I hope that’s our mentality. There are individual accolades up for grabs (in the tourney) so there shouldn’t be a lack of motivation.”
The motivation was there, but the final matches didn’t turn out very favorable for Plymouth.
No. 2 singles, along with Nos. 1 and 2 doubles were all 1-seed versus 2-seed with Plymouth the top seed in each, but unfortunately the lower seed took each spot. The closest match was a three-setter at No. 2 doubles involving Cassidy Riddle and Annie Plothow, with two sets going 6-4 and a third needing a tiebreaker.
At No. 1 singles, Plymouth’s Aubrey Vervynckt, seeded third, knocked off the 2-seed in the semifinal round to secure valuable points as a championship match finalist even though she lost there to freshman prodigy Addie Lind of Warsaw.
Ironically, the only position of the five Friday not playing for first place did go Plymouth’s way. At No. 3 singles, Morgan Langfeldt, the 3-seed, easily dispatched the 4-seed, Olivia Gayler from Northridge, 6-2, 6-0.
“Morgan played awesome,” said Haeck. “She dictated the points and probably served the best she has all year. She was very consistent too. When she got an early lead in the second set, her opponent lost a lot of steam. You could tell that was going to be a short set.”
Despite a rough final day to end the tourney, Plymouth’s body of work turned out to be way more than enough as the Lady Pilgrims ended up outscoring Warsaw 47-38 during the tournament to claim the conference hardware. In fact, Warsaw was third place in the tourney as Northwood edged them by a point.
“I’m happy with the week we had,” Haeck concluded. “We didn’t play well enough to win (last night), but we did to win the conference. I’m proud of our effort.”
Next up for Plymouth is sectionals. The Lady Pilgrims are part of Sectional 49 along with Glenn, Laville, Triton and the host, Bremen. The pairings will be announced on Monday at 7 p.m.