Highland Park sends three entrants to state tennis

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Highland Park junior Rachel Goldberg competes with teammate Sarah Raab (not pictured) in Saturday's sectional. Goldberg will be making her third trip to State. | Michael Jarecki ~ For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: November 21, 2011 9:36AM

A popular place to congregate at Saturday’s Highland Park girls tennis sectional was near a table.

The scorer’s table.

The singles bracket was taped on it.

So was the doubles bracket.

But a third sheet of paper, the one keeping track of the team standings, might have received the most eyeball hits.

With four matches left on Saturday — the singles and doubles title and third-place matches — HP had scored 16 team points.

Carmel’s total at that point: 16.

All kinds of people — coaches, players, parents, friends of players, friends of coaches, an administrator, second cousins of players — stopped by the table often, wondering what one of the team leaders had to do to stay ahead of the other.

Or what one team had to do in order to collect the championship plaque.

Some basketball games come down to the last shot.

A tennis sectional, oddly, had buzzer-beater potential.

Carmel freshman Brienne Minor broke the 16-16 tie, beating Mundelein junior Ari Dechter 6-2, 6-1 for the singles title and two team points.

“Serene,” said HP junior singles player Marisa Guggenheim, who lost to Minor in a quarterfinal match on Friday. “Brienne looks so serene when she plays.”

HP junior Jacqueline Baum, after netting her second straight state berth on Friday, looked to win one team point Saturday by beating Mundelein’s Ali MacDonald in the third-place singles match.

She did exactly that, with a 6-2, 6-2 victory.

Carmel 18, HP 17.

Two matches to go.

And both were HP-Carmel matchups: HP’s Rachel Goldberg/Sarah Raab vs. Carmel’s Kathleen Felicelli/Michelle Kannenberg, for the doubles championship; and HP’s Janine Cooper/Nicole Berkman vs. Carmel’s Emily Rhine/Maclain Edwards, for third place in doubles.

Rhine/Edwards triumphed 6-1, 7-6 (5), upping the Corsairs’ lead to 19-17.

HP’s Giants still had a shot at successfully defending its sectional title, as long as Goldberg/Raab won their match, worth two team points. The winner of the big plaque would then have to be determined by a tie-breaker or two. Or three.

Alas, Goldberg/Raab lost a tight one, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, and Carmel (21 team points) captured its first sectional title since 2002.

“They’re very good athletes … aggressive at the net, and they poached a lot,” Raab said of Kennenberg/Felicelli.

“They’re really consistent,” Goldberg added. “And they don’t have many weaknesses.”

HP (17 points) finished runner-up, ahead of Mundelein (3rd place, 12 points) and its two state singles qualifiers.

HP, like Carmel, advanced three entrants to State.

The results thrilled Giants coach Katie Lashbrook.

“(Our girls) did a great job,” she said. “Carmel was too good, too deep.

“I’ll ask our girls what they want to work on before State, and I’ll offer them suggestions. Then we’ll drill.”

Goldberg, a junior, became a three-time state doubles qualifier on Friday, after a 6-0, 6-0 rout of a Woodlands Academy tandem.

Goldberg went 4-2 at state with Emily Tresley (HPHS, ’11) last fall, after pairing up with Elana Woldenberg (HPHS, ’11) and going 2-1 at the rain-interrupted state meet in 2009.

Raab and Woldenberg also won four of six doubles matches at the 2010 state meet.

Cooper/Berkman, a couple of sophomores, downed Libertyville’s Abbie Anderson/Emily Daluga 6-4, 6-1 in a quarterfinal Friday for their first state berth.

‘State’-ment: The state meet starts Thursday morning at Prospect HS and many other sites in the northwest suburbs.