Mixing it up worked for Emporia High’s tennis team, and the Spartans’ top singles players will be a duo at the State meet next Friday and Saturday in Emporia.
Jordan Sosa and Rose Nasrazadani qualified for State as a doubles team on Thursday at the regional tennis meet at Lake Shawnee in Topeka. Sosa and Nasrazadani, who have been mostly singles players, went 1-2 and finished in fourth place. They split two matches with a Shawnee Heights doubles team, winning the first one 6-3, 7-5 and losing the second 6-1, 6-3. In their third match against a team from Lansing, Sosa/Nasrazadani lost 7-5, 6-4.
“Both of ’em are seniors,” Spartans coach Melinda Flohr said, “so to be able to play the state tournament on their home court, I know, is pretty exciting for them.”
Flohr said putting the two together in doubles was deemed to be the best chance Emporia had at qualifying as many people for State as possible.
“We had some results from league that didn’t really help us as far as being able to get some seeds at the regional tournament,” she said. “And so we just decided to... mix things up and put those two together in doubles.”
Emporia finished fifth out of six teams in the regional, scoring two points. Tiffany Ma and Kaitlin Gile competed in singles for the Spartans. Ma lost to Lansing’s Allison Dillon 6-3, 6-4, and Gile lost to Kaitlyn Burton of Shawnee Heights 6-3, 6-3. Kaitlin Pedersen and Whitney Page competed as the Spartans’ other doubles team, losing to Lansing 6-3, 6-2.