Thirteen schools from Region 5-AAA gathered during a bright sunny day on April 10 at the DeKalb Tennis Center for the 2012 regional playoffs. The Grady tennis team began its matches with optimism and enthusiasm. A breeze chilled the air through the day while schools chattered about strategies and excitement for the matches.
Before play began, Grady tennis coach Scott Stephens said, “My hope for the day is that the boys and girls qualify for state.”
To meet that goal, the Grady boys and girls teams would have to finish in fourth or higher as the top four finishers in the tournament qualify for the state tournament. Both teams would have to pull an upset as the girls game into the tournament seeded fifth while the boys were seeded sixth.
To reach “the final four” and qualify for state, teams must win their first and second round matches.
The day began in promising fashion for both the boys and girls. The girls crushed Columbia, 5-0. The three singles players — Briana and Alexandra Fairley and Riley Lerner all blanked their opponents 8-0 while the doubles teams of Kayla Valley and Camille Harris, and Josephine O’Dwyer and Faye Webster won their doubles matches by the same 8-1 score. O’Dwyer started the match with an aggressive serve, and Webster was quick on her feet, making great shots from the net.
The boys also toppled their opening-round opponent, Stone Mountain, 4-0, in what No. 2 singles player Jack Webster described as a “fairly easy” win.
Nile Kendall, the No. 1 singles player, and Webster both won their matches 8-1, the same score by which the doubles teams for Eli Mansbach and Quinn Mulholland, and Troy Kleber and Max Trachtenberg won their matches. The No. 3 singles player, Chris Oglesby, was leading his match 7-3, but the match was suspended because Grady had already clinched the win.
Hopes were high heading in to the second round. The boys would face the No. 3-seeded North Springs while the girls would square off against No. 4-seeded North Atlanta.
“I’m really excited about our potential this year, and North Atlanta is tough but if we put all of our effort in we have a chance at qualifying for state” Lerner said as she watched the boys struggle against North Springs.
Grady had anticipated the two second-round opponents had talked about the teams often throughout the day. The Grady players respected North Atlanta and North Springs as among the better public-school tennis teams in metro Atlanta, but they also felt like Grady had a good chance to upset them and qualify for state.
“The [Grady] girls … beat [North Atlanta] 5-0 without their best player,” Lerner said, “but [North Atlanta has] beaten us with their best player 3-2.”
But the second round ended up being much less kind to the Grey Knights.
Although the boys team played some brilliant shots against North Springs, the Spartans swept the Knights, 4-0. As the doubles team of Mulholland and Mansbach lost a close match featuring several great serves and shot by both players, Grady’s other doubles team, Chants Davidson and Trachtenberg fell in straight sets. Oglesby and Webster meanwhile both lost in straight sets, Webster falling 6-2, 6-1. Kendall had dropped the first set, 6-4, but his effort to even the match in the second set was called off because the Knights had already lost the team match.
The girls played very competitively in a tough and hard match against North Atlanta, but ultimate fell short, 3-2.
North Atlanta captured the first two single matches while Grady took the the two doubles matches.
No. 1 singles player Brianna Fairley drew a tough opponent in Sophia Grace, the No. 12-ranked 16-and-under singles player in the nation. Against such stiff competition, Fairley was able to capture three games over two sets in a 6-1, 6-2 loss. In the No. 2, singles match, Alexandra Fairley lost to Arianna Abayomi, 6-2, 6-3.
The doubles teams of Harris and Valley, and Faye Webster and O’Dwyer put Grady one match away from advancing to the regional semifinals and clinching a berth in the state tournament.
It all came down to the No. 3 singles match. Grady’s state tournament hopes rested on the Lerner’s racket. After dropping the first set, 6-2, Lerner battled to even the match, but ultimately lost the second set , 6-2, and the match.
The girls ended their season with a 9-6 record and a fifth-place finish in Region 5-AAA. The boys were 5-8 overall, tied with North Atlanta for sixth in the region.
