St. Andrew's girls poised to defend state tennis title

Wednesday, April 18, 2012
by Dave Heeren

CASSELBERRY - For the second year in a row, unheralded St. Andrew's is defying the seeds and is poised to defend its Class 1A state girls tennis championship.

Last year, the Scots entered the tournament with one player seeded No. 1, one No. 2 and three unseeded. The Scots scored a bunch of upsets en route to winning the team title.

St. Andrew's entered Wednesday again with a single No. 1 seed and one No. 2, but buoyed by unseeded Rachel McKay's 6-0, 6-0 rout of No. 2 Sarah Yaffe of Carrollwood, the Scots are tied with Ransom Everglades for first place. Both teams have 10 points.

Caroline Hsu, Macie Tendrich, Virginia Peck-Phillips and Amanda Soo Ping Chow and McKay all contributed at least one point for St. Andrew's.

St. Andrew's coach Scott Williams said he is proud of how well his team has played this season after graduating the top two players from the championship team.

"They solidified as a team, dug down deep, worked hard to improve, and decided to go for it," he said.

In boys play, St. Andrew's William Russell upheld his No. 1 seed by advancing to the finals with two victories. Unseeded Andrew Dykeman upset Austin Lindner of Providence 6-2, 6-2 in the No. 3 singles. In No. 5 singles, second-seeded Ross Weisman also won two matches for the Scots.