CHARLESTON, W.Va. — If George Washington’s Nadia Orcutt and Zoe Charles were going to repeat as Class AAA girls tennis doubles champions, they surely would have to earn it.
Huntington’s Molly Archer and Olivia Akers claimed the first set, and despite the Highlander duo dropping the second set, they were in control of the super tiebreaker with an 8-4 lead and having never trailed.
That’s about the time Orcutt and Charles’ championship mettle kicked in, with the duo combining for six unanswered points to end the match and prevail with its second straight state championship, 2-6, 6-4, (10-8).
“We had nothing to lose. We played to win and didn’t play safe,” Orcutt said. “We play to be aggressive the whole time. We were successful in our endeavors and we kept our confidence levels up. We didn’t let stupid shots get us down and we went one ball at a time for each point and it finally got us to where we wanted to be.”
On the boys side, the final didn’t have near the same drama with the Hurricane duo of Jacob Smolder and Zachary Giertz defeating Woodrow Wilson’s Ram Asaithambi and Ethan Sheppard 6-1, 6-3.
“We were serving well and we just kept it going,” Giertz said. “We’ve been playing for a few years together and we’ve developed chemistry so that we get to go out there and win some matches.”
Earlier Saturday, Smolder and Giertz clashed in a singles semifinal which Smolder won en route to his state championship.
“It definitely helps my game. He’s a good player and getting to play him helps me get better,” Giertz said. “We actually played each other in the semifinals at regionals, too.”
The duo then joined forces to have their way in three matches as they were hardly threatened. Prior to playing in the final, Smolder and Giertz won comfortably twice at 8-1, while Asaithambi and Sheppard outlasted George Washington’s Samir Jones and Owen Erlewine 9-8 (7-4), and then got past Cabell Midland’s Ashton Cottrell and Jack Erlewine, 8-5.
It wasn’t as comfortable, but every bit as satisfying for Orcutt and Charles, a passionate duo that helped guide the Patriots to the team championship one day earlier.
Down the stretch, they found a way to preserve against Archer and Akers, who had accomplished much of what they hoped to throughout a well-played match.
“They are an extremely competitive and well-rounded duo and we had to figure out a very articulated game plan to beat them,” Orcutt said. “At the beginning, they were completely outplaying us and we had to figure out what to do to be able to outplay them.”
Charles felt the biggest factor in the turnaround was an increase in aggressiveness and avoiding complacency.
“In the first set, we were just hitting back and forth from the baseline and it wasn’t working,” Charles said. “We had to switch it up and try to come to the net. That was our biggest turning point. Rushing the net was the biggest thing for us.”
When the duo finally gained its first lead in the super tiebreaker, it didn’t squander a chance to close it out quickly.
“We knew if we wanted to stay in it, we had to be as aggressive as we had been to get us to that point in the match,” Orcutt said. “Our goal this whole season was to get a repeat of this exact feeling in this exact match. We had known what it is to be in a tough finals match from last year, and we knew we had to dig and try to get to this moment.”
In its quarterfinal and semifinal round matches, Orcutt and Charles won far more comfortably at 8-1.
Akers and Archer had also done the same, advancing first with an 8-0 victory and then an 8-3 triumph.
In somewhat of an odd twist, most semifinal doubles matches began outdoors at the Kanawha City Community Center before rain approximately 15 minutes in forced a change of venue and location to the Charleston Tennis Club for the remainder of doubles play throughout the afternoon.
“Outside I knew I would be more focused on making more balls, because in those other conditions you’re not hitting it as hard, but when we came inside, I knew hitting a bigger serve and trying to win points quicker was probably a better idea,” Giertz said. “I adjusted and tried to go for a little bit more.”