Ottawa’s Zulee Moreland wins 1A singles sectional title

OTTAWA – Ottawa’s Zulee Moreland had a plan heading into her championship match against Morris’ Shreya Patel on Saturday afternoon at the Henderson-Guenther Tennis Facility .

The Pirates junior said the key to her 6-3, 6-4 victory to capture the Class 1A Ottawa Girls Tennis Sectional singles title was sticking to that plan.

“Shreya has a very strong forehand and tends to slice the ball on her backhand, so my plan was to try and hit to her backhand as much as I could,” Moreland said. “I knew she played a lot like I do as far as wanting to rally until an opening came up and then go for a winning shot. I feel like I did a good job of staying with the things I know I do well even if at times that wasn’t working as well as I would have liked.

“I’m very happy with how I played.”

All players in action on Saturday had already punched their ticket to the state tournament to be played next week at multiple locations in the Chicago suburbs.

Moreland – who went to state last season in doubles – reached the championship after topping La Salle-Peru’s Grace Pecchio 7-6 (2), 6-3 in the morning’s semifinals, while Patel – who also advanced to state in doubles – earned a tough 6-4, 6-3 semifinal triumph over the Cavaliers’ Eva Cervantes.

“Zulee and I hit at the same pace, and our styles and how we play are very similar,” said Patel, who battled a blister on her racket hand and fatigue from the over 2-hour semifinal match. “We both want to keep the ball in play and try and outlast our opponent in long volleys. In both sets Zulee was able to break my serve a couple times and that forced me to be a little more aggressive than I wanted to be and take a few more chances than I would have liked.

“My semifinal was a tough one, one where my opponent really did a good job of moving be back and forth, so to be honest, I was getting pretty tired at the end of the second set. That said, Zulee played very well and was a very good opponent.”

Cervantes defeated Pecchio 6-0, 0-6, 6-3 in the third-place match.

In doubles, the Morris duo of senior Julia Borgstrom and junior Skyler Saelens – who advanced to state last season after finishing first and second in singles at sectionals – fell in a fantastic championship match 7-5, 3-6, 6-4 to Pontiac’s Brooke Burger and Olivia Masching.

Borgstrom and Saelens reached the title match with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over L-P senior duo of Izzy Pecchio and Kylee Halm, while Burger and Masching defeated the Cavaliers’ senior team of Cali Mickley and Elena Leone 6-3, 6-4.

In the third-place match, Mickley and Leone – who fell one win short of a trip to state last season – topped “teammates” Pecchio and Halm 6-2, 6-1.

“Our team is a family, and we practice against each other all the time, but this was a chance for us to actually compete against each other,” Leone said of the all-Cavs matchup. “I think with us being our No. 1 doubles team during the season this gave us a chance to kind of prove that ranking and it also gave Kylee and Izzy a chance to maybe prove it wrong. It was a very competitive, but very fun match.”

Mickley said while an unusual match, she felt all four players did a good job of treating it like any other match.

“The tough part is we all know what each other is good at and what tendencies we have,” Mickley said. “There weren’t too many surprises, but I thought we all did a good job of trying some shots or making decisions that we might not make against an opponent that doesn’t know how we play. It was a strange situation, but I thought we all did a good job of overlooking that and just tried to win the match.

“We are all competitive, so once we got started it was just another match.”

La Salle-Peru won the team title – the first since 2016 – with 26 points, edging out runner-up Morris (24), with Ottawa (16) third and Pontiac (10) fourth.