BLOOMINGTON — Hannah Frey and Paige Littrell will be missing their graduation ceremony at Columbus North on Saturday.
Making it to the girls tennis semistate round for the first time in their careers seems like a fair trade-off.
The Bull Dogs rolled past Seymour, 4-1, in the finals of the Bloomington North Regional on Wednesday afternoon, earning a trip to Saturday’s Jasper Semistate. They’ll face the winner of this morning’s matchup between Evansville Mater Dei and Gibson Southern.
“We’re excited about getting back to that point,” North coach Kendal Hammel said. “Hopefully, they look at it that; you don’t get this opportunity all the time.”
As was the case during the regular-season meeting between the two teams, North swept all three singles points in straight sets.
Paige Littrell was a 6-0, 6-1 winner against Megan Baurle at No. 2 singles, and Madelyn Sanders triumphed at No. 3 by that same score against Seymour’s Lou-Anne Hoarau.
After Seymour’s Emma Wood and Lindsey Hume capped off a 6-0, 6-1 victory against Hannah Frey and Hannah Shoemaker at No. 1 doubles, North’s No. 2 tandem of Yijiang Zhao and Shweta Srinivasan clinched the match by defeating Katie O’Mara and Addie Rudge, 6-1, 6-2.
The final match point to be settled was at No. 1 singles, where the Owls’ Hallie Crenshaw came up short against the Bull Dogs’ Aubrey Smith, 6-2, 6-4.
Littrell said that though the Bull Dogs weren’t taking anything for granted against an Owls team they’d already beaten, the team was riding high after a big semifinal victory against Bloomington North on Tuesday.
“I felt pretty confident in us,” she said, “especially how we played (Tuesday) night. I thought we were going to come out here and take care of business, and that’s what we did.”
