Wallenpaupack’s Erika Badner provided the surprises Monday when two groups demolished the competition through the early rounds of the District 2 Girls Tennis Singles Championships.
Badner posted straight-set upsets over consecutive seeded opponents to advance as the only unseeded player already into Wednesday’s semifinals.
Karissa Ghigiarelli from Riverside and Bella Peters from Abington Heights breezed into Wednesday’s 1 p.m. semifinals at Kirby Park. Ghigiarelli won three straight 6-0, 6-0 matches in Class 2A at Kirby Park. Peters lost just one game in two rounds of Class 3A competition at the North Pocono Middle School.
Ghigiarelli was also part of a group of top four seeds that rolled into the semifinals in Class 2A by winning 144 of 150 games they played. She is joined in the semifinals by Scranton Prep’s Alyssa Wigley and the Wyoming Seminary combination of Ilana Rosenthal and Ella Krypel.
The Class 3A tournament was not as simple.
Six players remain after two matches were suspended because of darkness and those matches will be completed at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday before the regularly scheduled semifinals.
Peters and Badner await their opponents after Badner was the only Class 3A player to win three times Monday when the field was trimmed from 22 entries. All four remaining players in Class 2A had to win three times as the original field of 34 actually needed four rounds to get down to the semifinalists.
Badner opened with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Delaware Valley’s Sierra Harmann. She followed that up by topping sixth-seeded Maia Philbin from Scranton, 6-0, 7-5, then eliminating third-seeded Hannah Ziegler from Crestwood, 6-4, 6-4.
Badner awaits the winner of the match between Rina Hanumali, the second seed from Abington Heights, and another unseeded player, Madison Maloney from West Scranton.
Hanumali won the first set, 6-3, and has a 1-0 lead and a 30-love advantage in the second game of the second set.
The battle to face Peters is tighter.
Fourth-seeded Julie Schriver from North Pocono won the first set 7-6 on a 7-5 tiebreaker.
Gabrielle Chantiloupe came back to take the second set, 6-0, and has a slight lead late in the deciding third set. Chantiloupe is ahead, 5-4, but Schriver has a 15-love lead in the game that will resume.
Both district champions advance to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association state singles tournament while all other players remain eligible to try to reach state play in doubles.
While Ghigiarelli, the 2019 state Class 2A champion, and Peters try to complete their career dominance of district singles play, the two players possibly in line to battle for the future top spot meet in one of the Class 3A semifinals.
Second-seeded Wigley and third-seeded Rosenthal each lost just one game in six sets Monday.
The freshmen faced each other in a match last week that went unfinished because the outcome of the District 2 Class 2A team championship had already been decided in Wyoming Seminary’s favor. At the time, Rosenthal led Wigley, 6-1, 3-1.
Ghigiarelli, who has 6-0, 6-0 wins in her last eight district tournament matches, plays Krypel in a rematch of last year’s championship match.
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Full results from Monday’s four rounds in Class 2A and three rounds in Class 3A: https://nepasportsnation.com/district-2-girls-tennis-singles-results/.
