IN Fox Chapel Area Winter 2016 | Page 23

PERFECT YEAR FOR GIRLS’ TENNIS

When girls’ tennis coach Alex Slezak observes his players during August preseason practices, he always enjoys seeing the improvements they made in the offseason. This year, those advances were strong enough to serve up a perfect regular season record of 9-0 and the program’ s 21 st section championship. The girls proceeded to the WPIAL Class AAA team tournament and took third place, and then advanced to the PIAA Class AAA quarterfinals.

Individually, junior Amanda Nord won the section 3 individual singles championship for the first time, but her signature event is doubles tennis. This season she paired with freshman Charlotte James and the duo won the section and WPIAL Class AAA doubles titles. From there, the duo breezed through the PIAA Class AAA playoffs and became the number one doubles team in Pennsylvania. It was Amanda’ s third WPIAL gold medal and her second time winning the state’ s most coveted title in doubles tennis. Both Amanda and Charlotte were selected for the all-state team.

Photo Courtesy Hill’ s Studio ox Chapel Area FOX CHAPEL AREA SCHOOL NEWS

ANOTHER BANNER YEAR FOR BOYS’ GOLF

Last season, the boys’ golf team topped the 500-victoriesmark in section play and then added to the scorecard in a big way again this year with 11 more wins. The success also marked the program’ s 27 th section championship and cleared the way for yet another run in the WPIAL team playoffs.

After progressing all the way to the final WPIAL team championship game, the team broke the former WPIAL scoring record in that game. Despite the Foxes’ stellar performance, the team lost its bid for the gold medal by only one point. While a second place finish is certainly a mark of great accomplishment, Coach Bryan Deal would like nothing better next season than to break their tendency to finish as the WPIAL runner-up, something that’ s happened three out of the past four years.

Still, the good news was that four players advanced to the WPIAL Class AAA individual championship. Sophomore Gregor Meyer won the gold medal at the historic Oakmont Country Club golf course, and along with seniors Anthony

Cordaro and Alex Lawson, moved on to the PIAA Western Regional Invitational Championship. The results enabled Anthony and Alex to press on to the PIAA Class AAA individual playoffs, both for the second time.

In the end, the boys tied for sixth place and automatically made Pennsylvania’ s all-state team. Not only were their scores the highest finish of any Fox Chapel Area High School boys’ golfer since 1999, it also was a fitting conclusion to their high school golf careers. Especially during their junior and senior years, the two see-sawed for the number one and number two positions on the team, but now, for once, they were even.

Photo Courtesy Hill’ s Studio

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