TUMWATER — W.F. West’s Ellie Mittge secured a sub-district championship on Tuesday, topping Aberdeen’s Sophie Knutson 5-7, 6-0, 6-4 in the Sub-District Championship at Black Hills High School.
After losing the opening set, W.F. West coach Megan Wellander said that Mittge did a great job at adjusting on the fly, which set her up for success in the second and third sets.
“She was just very determined,” Wellander said. “She came to play. She was focused, she battled, and she made good game-time decisions.”
It’s the third year in a row that Mittge is a league champion, but it’s the first time that she’s accomplished the feat as a singles player.
Both Mittge and Knutson are through to the district tournament, as are W.F. West’s Isabella Casimiro and Aberdeen’s Madi Ritter.
On Wednesday, Ritter topped Casimiro in the third/fourth match 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, sending Casimiro to the pigtail.
The winner will earn the No. 3 seed, while the loser will be the No. 4 and will have to play a pigtail to earn a spot in the district quarterfinals.
Casimiro defeated fellow Bearcat Maddie Bradley in the consolation quarterfinals, and she overcame an 0-5 deficit in the second set against Black Hills’ Kirsten Beaulieu to win 6-1, 7-5 in the consolation semis.
“I was very excited,” Wellander said of the comeback. “That was awesome.”
That was far from the only thrilling match of the day.
On the doubles side, Tumwater’s Adela Schmiedeberg and Ashlyn Spencer won the sub-district title via forfeit over Centralia’s Suki Bringman and Saryn Pelesky due to an illness, but two consolation matches went the full three sets.
W.F. West’s Kate Mordick and Kloey Sparks topped their teammate duo of Aubrey Prigmore and Eliana Alves in three sets, including a tiebreaker in the third set.
After that, they faced Centralia’s Neela Haywood and Eliyah Rooklidge in the third/fourth match, and that match featured two tiebreaks.
“They just really like to stress us out a little bit,” Wellander joked. “But I appreciate the effort and can applaud the determination and drive to focus even when you lost the first set. To turn that drive on multiple times in a day is awesome.”
Haywood and Rooklidge squeaked out a 6-1, 6-7 (4-7), 7-6 (7-5) victory to earn a top-three finish and avoid the district pigtail.
Tumwater’s duo of Schmiedeberg and Spencer, Centralia’s duos of Haywood and Rooklidge and Bringman and Pelesky, and W.F. West’s duo of Mordick and Sparks will join W.F. West’s Mittge and Casimiro and Aberdeen’s Knutson and Ritter at the district tournament next week.
Districts will begin on Friday, May 15 at the Mint Valley Tennis Center in Longview. The top three finishers in both the singles and doubles tournaments will advance to the state tournament, which is set for May 22 and 23 at the Nordstrom Tennis Center on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle.
