If the Baylor girls' tennis team earns a seventh straight TSSAA tennis title later this spring, the Lady Red Raiders undoubtedly will point to the DecoTurf tournament as a key building block in their season.
While they fell short of repeating as DecoTurf champions on Saturday, the 4-3 title-match loss to Marietta's Walton High School at the Champions Club provided a level of intensity and competition that should serve the Lady Raiders well as the season progresses.
"This tournament is a good barometer for us. You have success here, and that's a bonus," said Baylor coach Dustin Kane, whose team had won four of the first nine DecoTurf titles. "We play this tournament to play high-quality, high-caliber teams. We are able to see different styles and different tactics. We are able to see how people adjust to our game plan. This will give us a chance to build on those things to make us tougher."
Walton also uses the DecoTurf tournament as a testing ground for its postseason, which begins in mid-April. The DecoTurf event, completing its third year in Chattanooga, has become part of Walton's formula for success. The Marietta school has won four consecutive Georgia top-classification tennis titles and 14 of the last 15.
"This tournament offers the most consistent and deepest competition," Walton coach Anthony Foti said. "Other than coming here and hoping to win, the benefit to us is that we play such great teams, and this tournament prepares us for our playoff run. When we go to the state tournament, there's not anything that they haven't seen yet."
Walton, which beat Baylor on the way to the 2015 DecoTurf title, had the additional challenge of playing its matches within a smaller time window. Due to a Georgia rule that prohibits athletic teams from participating in events until the conclusion of the school day, Walton could not begin play until 3:30 p.m. Friday while non-Georgia participants started in the morning.
"We had some girls who have played six matches in about a 30-hour span," Foti said. "There's nothing like this. The intensity of this tournament is unbelievable. Baylor is a great team. To win this tournament is fantastic and I'm very proud of the girls, but I'm thrilled that we played such great competition."
Top-seeded Walton grabbed a 1-0 advantage over second-seeded Baylor in the title match by gaining the point awarded the team that wins two of the three doubles matches. Baylor's Presley Thomas (No. 2), Ashton Jenne (No. 3) and Landie McBrayer (No. 6) earned singles victories, but wins by Walton's Liz Norman (No. 1), Samantha Buyckx (No. 4) and Grace Gaskins (No. 5) secured the championship.
"We knew it would be tough and it was close," Kane said. "We had some chances, but that's an excellent team. This helps us a ton for the state. This tournament format, with match after match, you are trying to get to the tournament final. The intensity here builds with each round. There's nothing that replicates that until you get to the state tournament."
According to tournament director Brandon Fuesner, the DecoTurf event completed nearly 1,100 matches in less than 36 hours at six locations in Chattanooga, including Baylor, McCallie, GPS, Brainerd Municipal and Warner Park along with the Champions Club. This year's event featured 64 teams with three divisions of boys and two divisions of girls.
Georgia's Milton in the B Division joined Walton (A Division) as champions on the girls' side of the tournament. The boys' champions were Spartanburg (S.C.) in the A Division, Niceville (Fla.) in B and George Washington of Charleston, W.Va., in C.
Fuesner said he plans to return to the Scenic City for the 11th edition of the tournament in 2018.
"The facilities are tremendous, but the people are even better," Fuesner said. "I cannot say enough about the work that is done on this tournament by the volunteers from the Chattanooga Tennis Association. I could not run this tournament without them."
Contact Greg Thompson at sports@timesfreepress.com