It’s rare that Baylor and GPS team up, but on Saturday, the two schools joined forces to make the Ensworth tennis teams’ trip to Chattanooga a bad one.
The Baylor boys beat up on Ensworth 7-0 Saturday, while the Bruisers defeated the Lady Tigers 4-0. Both local teams advance to the Division II-AA state tournament.
The Red Raiders (12-0) will be highly familiar with their state semifinal opponent, as they will face McCallie Wednesday at Old Fort State Park at 12 Eastern Time. GPS’s opponent has not yet been determined.
The Bruisers got their four wins in their match, but it took starting all nine matches to do it. Bronte Goodhue, Emma McCallie and Lauren Schlabach had wins in singles, while the combinations of Goodhue and McCallie, and Schlabach and Meredith Morrow had wins in doubles.
“With everything we had going on, I encouraged the girls to try to stay focused and take care of this match,” GPS coach Sue Bartlett said. GPS had their graduation Friday and a banquet Saturday afternoon. “We wanted to take care of this match and take things one point at a time.
“Ensworth is a good team — probably the best they’ve had, and they’re getting better every year.”
Baylor’s road to the state tournament was slightly easier. Michael Goldstein, Carlos Cuevas, Anderson Scarpa, Aditya Rali, Alex Cooper and Eric Roddy had singles’ wins, with only Goldstein’s win over state qualifier Rand Jackson going three sets.
Goldstein dropped the first set 6-3 before taking the second 6-3 and winning the tiebreaker 10-8.
Cooper and Cuevas, Goldstein and Scarpa and Rali and Zach Moore had doubles wins.
“We were all ready to play today,” Baylor coach Ned Caswell said. “I think as a team that we’re focused on the task at hand. Everyone played well and Michael Goldstein had a really good win at No. 1.”
Caswell mentioned it was “interesting” they were matched up against McCallie in the semifinals.
“The pressure’s on us since we’ve beat them a couple times,” he said. “We’ll go out and be focused and not take them for granted. We won, but the matches were close.
“We have to win two matches to win a state title, so we’ll go out and see what happens.”