Duo stays unbeaten

By JEN SEAVEY

Journal Sports Editor

MANKATO -- New Ulm's Liz Reedy and Jenny Pugh used a little anger to their advantage Monday to win the Section 2AA South subsection championship tennis match at Mankato Tennis Club.

After beating Hutchinson seniors Gina Matthias and Sam Ebert 7-5, 4-6 and 6-2, the New Ulm duo's irritation at losing the first set in the championship match to lend them energy to dominate the next two sets. The Eagles pair beat Hutchinson first-seeded Katie Hoversten and Molly Maurer 1-6, 6-0 and 6-3.

The New Ulm tandem got down in the first set, losing the set 6-1 with the help of a couple of bad calls by Hutchinson, including a line call and a score discrepancy.

"[We were thinking] we're in this. There were so many deuce points," Pugh said. "When we get mad, we let our rage out on serves and smashes, but we still stayed in control."

"We just tried harder -- stepped it up," Reedy said.

Hoversten and Maurer had won the top seed over Reedy and Pugh at the seeding meeting with a coin toss. The Hutchinson team had no established doubles record because they had been singles players during the regular season; the Eagles team had a record of 9-0 as doubles. Now, they are 13-0 going into the Section championship Wednesday at Swanson Tennis Center at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.

"Hutchinson goes to state every year for doubles," Pugh said. "Honestly, I wasn't expecting to win going into it."

"It was definitely a good win for us," Reedy added.

In the second set, the Eagles played with confidence, not giving the Hutchinson Tigers an opening. The duo stayed aggressive and mixed lobs with well-placed, hard-hit shots after talking to coach Willis Runck.

The duo hit a long lob then came back to the net and put it over without letting the ball bounce, putting the Eagles up 3-0 in the second set. Reedy finished the set off 6-0 when she blasted a shot at her opponents feet up at the net and the Hutchinson player couldn't react in time.

"At first, we did lobbing all the time, but it didn't work as well as when we were being aggressive," Pugh said. "Lobbing worked for some opponents -- this one, it just didn't."

"They didn't want to finesse -- we usually don't play like that, but we changed it a little," Reedy said.

The Eagles girls settled into a game that incorporated their style of finesse and lobs with their opponents' style of hard-hitting bashes, making it their own.

In the third set, the Tigers took the first game, but Pugh started the second game with an ace serve, getting a severe angle on the serve to baffle her opponent. The Eagles went up 3-2, then split the next two games to lead by just one game, 4-3.

"I was a little bit [nervous], but we had so much energy," Reedy said.

The Eagles came back to win the last two games in the third set convincingly and win 6-3.

Jen Seavey can be reached at jseavey@nujournal.com