Garden City Shines in High School Tennis Championship

There was plenty to brag about for Garden City Tennis the weekend of Oct. 20 at Eisenhower Park.

Alexa Graham (freshman) finished first in the singles tournament and junior Brittany Burke and Morgan Herrmann (freshman) finished second in the doubles tournament.

Graham entered the tournament as the second seed behind Vivien Cheng, a senior from Syosset, the only opponent she lost to this season. Both girls had first round byes and dominated second and third round matches.

The semi-finals pitted all seeds against each other with Graham beating the #4 seed Nicole Torres from Great Neck North 6-2, 6-1. It was then time to face her conference rival in the finals.

The first set of the final match between Graham and Cheng was a real nail-biter with Graham going down 3-0 early in the match. Graham fought back to get the score to 6-6 and into a tie-break.

“Alexa took over the match in this tie-breaker, she mixed her shots well and moved Cheng all over the court,” said Coach Crystal Boyd. Graham won the tie-break 7-1 and continued her dominance into the second set beating Cheng 6-2.

In the doubles draw, Herrmann and Burke came in as the #3 seed in the tournament. They earned a first round bye and beat their next round opponent 10-7 in a 10-game pro-set. The third round was against a Plainedge team that just could not handle the power and craftiness of the Garden City pair. Burke and Herrmann won in straight sets, love and love, and also defeated a pair from Syosset in the quarter finals 6-1, 6-1.

The semi-final was an awesome match against Livingston and Brezel from Port Washington, last year’s county runner-up pair. Points went back and forth with some really great rallies, but Garden City pulled out the match 6-4, 6-4. Burke and Herrmann went on to the finals against last year's winning team, Gabby Leon and Veronica Paikin. After a hard fought match, the Garden City pair lost 6-3, 1-6, 5-7.

“The girls represented Garden City very well at the county tournament showing tremendous skill and great sportsmanship,” said Boyd.

After a disappointing last place finish in conference last season, the Garden City girls’ tennis team turned it around with a strong third place finish (9-5) in 2012. The girls made the playoffs, eventually losing to Port Washington in the semi-final round of the counties.

The team looks strong for next year, with 13 out of 14 returning players. This year’s players were Alexa Graham, Brittany Burke, Morgan Herrmann, Annie Foxen (senior), Lisa Genadry, Olivia Guarnieri, Leslie Wann, Liz Gee, Meaghan Kiely, Nicole Lind, Jessica Drum, Jeanette Oellerich, Hannah Eilbeck and AnnMarie Donahue.

Story by Crystal Boyd, physical education teacher and tennis coach