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The Thomas Jefferson Cavaliers’ girls tennis team fell to the Grain Valley Eagles 6-0 in the semifinals of the 2023 Class 2 Tennis Championships on Friday at Springfield’s Cooper Tennis Complex. That set up a third-place match between the Cavaliers (14-2) and Webster Groves (15-1). Both teams were undefeated before the start of the championships.

In the semifinals, TJ’s doubles team of senior Allison Ding and junior Jeanna Jeyaraj dropped a close match in a 9-7 loss to Grain Valley’s Finley LaForge and Kylee Bragaw.

Cavalier juniors Warda Morsy and Mayson Solum dropped their doubles match against Grain Valley’s Catherine Barnes and Delaney Thurn 8-5. The TJ duo had battled back from a 7-1 deficit but fell just short of a win.

In another doubles match, Thomas Jefferson siblings Kyla Yang and Esther Yang fell 8-2 to Grain Valley’s Emma Thiessen and Brooklyn Spencer.

Esther Yang, a freshman, also lost her first match of the season, 6-4, 6-0, in her singles match against Thiessen, a senior at Grain Valley.

Morsy also fell for the first time this year after dropping her singles match to Grain Valley’s Spencer by a score of 6-0 and 6-2.

Jeyaraj lost her No. 2 singles match 6-1, 6-1 to Bragaw.

The Cavaliers then faced off against the Webster Groves Statesmen in the third-place matchup. The Statesmen fell 5-0 in the semifinals to eventual state champion Ladue Horton Watkins (17-2). They dropped all three double matches to Ladue (8-0, 8-1 and 8-2) before falling in their singles (6-0, 6-0 and 6-1, 6-1).

In their third-place matchup, the Cavaliers got off to a 3-0 start, winning all three doubles matches in close battle, but eventually fell 5-4 after losing five of six singles matches.

As they did in the semifinals, the doubles team of Morsy and Solum found themselves down 6-2 early, but this time the Cavaliers prevailed, with a 9-7 win over Webster Grove’s Katherine Dirks and Milly Benkelman.

TJ earned its second team point after another close match, this one an 8-6 win by the Yang sisters over Elena King and Regan Matteotti.

In another doubles match, Thomas Jefferson’s lone senior Allison Ding and Jeyaraj played to an 8-8 tie with Webster Groves’ Addison Simpson and Margaret Nakatani before entering a seven-point tie breaker. That tie breaker went to extra points as well, but when the dust settled, TJ took the 9-8 win.

Up 3-0 heading into the singles matches, Webster Groves won the first three matches to tie the team score at 3-3. Morsey dropped a 6-1, 7-5 match to Nakatani, and Esther Yang fell 6-2, 6-3 to Dirks. Solum’s 6-7, 6-3, 10-6 loss to Benkelman tied the teams up at 3 matches.

Kyla Yang’s 2-6, 6-2, 10-7 tiebreaker win over Hannah Sweeney in the singles put TJ up in the team score 4-3, but Webster Groves’ Addison Simpson outlasted Ding 6-4, 7-5 in their singles match to tie it up at 4-4.

With one match left to play to decide the third-place winner, all eyes turned to TJ’s Jeyaraj and Webster Groves’ King. Jeyaraj took the first set 6-4 but fell in the second set 6-1, setting up a decisive third set. King prevailed 12-10 in the tiebreaker to give Webster Groves the third-place hardware.

TJ coach Tom Brumfield talked about saying goodbye to Ding, the team’s lone senior.

“She’s part of the family,” he said. “She’s one of those you always hate to lose. You can’t replace her. I have been lucky and fortunate enough to coach both her and her brother (Ian).”

Brumfield also talked about the parity between TJ and Webster Groves.

“That’s what you get into,” Brumfield said. “We knew there wasn’t going to be any easy matchup here. But we belong and we played. That last match was a heck of a match that could have gone either way.”

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