SEATTLE — Another meeting, another epic tennis match.
Sehome’s Will Topp and Riley Newman of South Whidbey, who faced each other already this season in league play and the District 1 tournament, met again in the 2A state championship match Saturday, with Topp coming form behind to beat the defending champion 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 at the Nordstrom Tennis Center at the University of Washington in Seattle.
It was also a rematch of the 2009 championship match, which saw Newman get the 7-5, 6-3 victory. This year, however, it was Topp who came out on top.
“Will played a fine match,” South Whidbey head coach Tom Kramer said. “He deserves a lot of credit for hanging in there and finishing Riley off when he had the opportunity.”
“Yeah, I’m going to have nightmares about this,” Newman joked after the match.
Newman struck first, winning the first set 6-4. After trailing 1-3, Newman took five of the next six points, including four consecutive, to earn the early advantage.
The early games relied on long rallies, which seemed to benefit a patient Newman. Topp tried to speed things along with slices, but Newman just hit winner after winner across the net.
By the second set, the epic rallies started to take their toll on Newman.
“I just didn’t have enough legs to finish it off,” Newman said.
Topp showed his frustration toward the end of the first set. The Mariner, who continually yelled “come on Will” at himself and smiled and pumped his fist toward the crowd, returned a forehand that went out of bounds. After Newman and an official both called the ball wide, the Sehome player blew his top, yelling at the official and putting a ball on the line while signaling that is where he believed his shot landed. The official maintained his ruling and Topp double faulted to end the set, throwing his racket afterwards and earning a 15-point penalty on the first point of the next set.
Newman then jumped out to a 4-1 lead, and appeared to be well on his way to defending his title, but then the ball started bouncing Topp’s way, and Newman began to feel the effects of four tennis matches in two days.
With Newman visibly frustrated and exhausted from running all over the court, Topp took the next eight games and 11 of the last 12 to earn his first state championship.
“(Newman) was resigned,” Kramer said. “He knew in the third set he wasn’t going to have any success. He was just out of gas.”
Topp finished third at state as a freshman before being runner-up last year. Newman’s state scorecard shows a fourth-place finish, a championship and now second place.
“It’s fun to play against (Topp),” Newman said. “It’s always a good match. I congratulate him.”
“He was very philosophic,” Kramer said of Newman after the match. “He said ‘you win some, you lose some.’
“Hopefully, we’ll be back next year to try again.”
There’s little evidence to support any other result.
Neither player dropped a set in the tournament before the championship game, with Newman coming back from a 1-5 deficit in his semifinal match to win 7-5, 6-3 against Luat Le of Interlake. Le earned a third-place finish.
“Last year I didn’t have as much pressure,” Newman said. “This year I felt the weight on my shoulders every match. Everyone was going after me.
“You have to be able to use this,” Newman continued. “I’m excited for next season.”
“Sometimes you learn a lot from losing,” Kramer said. “There’s no give up in Riley Newman. He’ll be back.”
Topp’s Mariners took the team trophy for the second consecutive year and Clarkston unseated Klahowa as the champion on the girls side.
The Falcons had one more reason to cheer Saturday afternoon at UW, with the doubles team of Shannon Craig and Julia Iversen placing third in doubles.
The duo lost a heartbreaker in the semifinals, falling in a third set tiebreaker 5-7, 6-4, 10-12 to a Squalicum team they beat “handily” in the district tournament according to Kramer. The South Whidbey team had three chances to win in the tiebreaker up 9-6, but couldn’t close the game out.
“That was a hard one to take,” Kramer said. “The ball was in our hands and we let it go.”
Craig and Iversen responded with a bang, beating Katie Servatius and Katie Van Cleave (Clarkston) 6-0, 6-1 in the third/fifth-place game.
“They went back to playing normal,” Kramer said.
Kramer was proud of his team, but sees some room for improvement in the coming season.
“We did what we did and hopefully we come back next year and try again. Give it another go,” he said.
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