New girls tennis champs will be crowned in WPIAL doubles

By: Greg Macafee
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 | 8:27 PM

New WPIAL champions will be crowned on Thursday when the doubles tournaments conclude at the Oxford Athletic Club in Wexford.

On Wednesday, four pairings, two from AA and two from AAA, worked their way into the finals.

In Class AA, Knoch’s Ally Bauer and Libby Conlon will take on Greensburg Salem’s Kasey and Paige Storkel for the title.

Bauer and Conlon cruised through their first two matches, defeating Julia Piatt and Bri Pierce of Keystone Oaks, 10-2 and Neshannock’s Kelli Huffman and Margo Silverman, 10-5. Their semifinal match was a little more of a struggle as Beaver’s Anna Blum and Olivia Rabak pushed them to the brink in a 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 thriller. Blum won the WPIAL tournament last year with teammate Devyn Campbell.

The Storkels beat Valley’s Aimee Johnson and Eden Richey 10-1 before they needed a tiebreaker to take down Beaver’s Isabel Rubino and Fiona Rubino in the second round, 11-10 (7-2). They punched their ticket to the championship match with a 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 win over Sewickley Academy’s Aleena Purewal and Milla Ivanova.

In Class AAA, the Latrobe pairing of Jenna Bell and Carolin Walters will take on the Peters Township team of Kat Wang and Marra Bruce for the title.

Wang and Bruce were the No. 1 seed heading into the tournament and they showed why, winning their first two matches by scores of 10-1 and 10-0. They earned a berth into the championship match when they took down Fox Chapel’s Carissa Shepard and Catherine Petrovich, 6-4, 6-1

Bell and Walters cruised through their first matchup, beating the Oakland Catholic pairing of Isabella Liu-Lopez and Sofia Heaps, 10-3. Then, the pair of Wildcats took down Upper St. Clair’s Maggie Stief and Anna Rush, 10-8. They punched their ticket for Thursday’s championship match with a 6-1, 6-2, win over Shady Side Academy’s Elle Santora and Renee Long.

In the third-place matches, Purewal and Ivanova will take on Blum and Rabak in AA and Santora and Long will face Shepard and Petrovich in AAA. The winners of both matches will head to the PIAA State Tournament in their respective classifications.

All four matches will take place at the Oxford Athletic Club in Wexford beginning at 2 p.m. on Thursday.

Greg Macafee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Greg by email at gmacafee@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Tags: Beaver, Fox Chapel, Greensburg Salem, Knoch, Latrobe, Peters Township, Sewickley Academy, Shady Side Academy