Pirates sweep doubles for MCT flight titles
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Margaret MacArthur was hoping for a third straight team tennis title at the Mercer County Tournament.
Instead, the West Windsor-Plainsboro High South senior settled for a third straight flight championship when she combined with Kim Wong for the second doubles title Wednesday at Mercer County Park to help the Pirates finish second in the team standings behind Princeton High School.
”It definitely means a lot,” MacArthur said. “Playing with Kim was awesome. It was really important to me for my last year because I’m not playing college tennis. It’s nice to win my last tournament.”
MacArthur and Wong defeated Princeton High’s Elise Gerdes and Gillian Samios, a team that they had narrowly defeated the first time that they played in the regular season. On Wednesday, the Pirates duo won, 6-3, 6-4.
”We definitely played pretty well,” MacArthur said. “The last time we played Princeton, it was really close so I think we came into this round with a definite strategy. We knew how to beat them. We were prepared.”
It’s the second year winning second doubles for MacArthur. She and Angela Weng won the title last year. MacArthur won the MCT second singles title two years ago before an influx of talent dropped her in the lineup.
”Originally, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to make varsity this year if we had Haley (Rich) and Claudia (Siniakowicz),” MacArthur said. “I’m just happy to be on the team and I think we’re doing great for how many people we lost, including losing Stephanie (Ji) with her ankle.”
WW-P South also picked up a flight championship at first doubles. Angela Li and Sanjana Ravi repeated their first-doubles gold of a year ago. They stopped PHS’ Zhenia Dementyeva and Nikhita Salgame, 6-4, 7-5.
The Pirates team had defeated PHS in the regular season, 3-2, and WW-P South again won three head-to-head matches with the MCT champion Little Tigers when Weng beat Katelyn Hojeibane in the second singles consolation match, 5-7, 6-3, (10-8). Meghan Reilly also won her consolation match at third singles, 6-1, 6-4, over Hopewell Valley’s Marissa Liu.
The Pirates had to completely rebuild their singles lineup from last year with the loss of first singles’ Siniakowicz and second singles’ Rich not returning and this year’s original third singles’ Ji is out with an ankle injury, yet they were right there to finish second overall.
”I feel like we’ve handled it pretty well,” MacArthur said. “Caroline (Zhou) and Angela both improved so much. They just stepped up to the plate when we didn’t have Haley and Claudia.”
Wong has stepped up plenty from a year ago as well. She has moved into the varsity lineup to pair with MacArthur.
”I was ranked No. 15 last year,” Wong said of the Pirates’ ladder. “I was second doubles JV. I went to four weeks of tennis camp at Lawrenceville. They make you play like seven hours a day. It’s four hours in the morning and then one to two in the afternoon and one at night just hitting around. That really helped because we played a lot of matches against different people so you got experience with every kind of strategy that people used.”
Wong and MacArthur are unbeaten through their first 10 matches together, something the Pirates can count on as they head into the state tournament next week.
”I think we have an idea of what we’ll be facing so we’ll be prepared for it,” Wong said. “I think we can probably win our matches because we work really well together and we know how each other hit.”
The two have not taken long to adjust to each other. They complement each other perfectly to give the Pirates two strong doubles tandems.
”Margaret has a really good forehand, and I guess I can really slice my backhand,” Wong said. “I work on the ad side, and she works on the deuce side so it works out fine. Today we switched it.”
In a change, the Pirates decided to eschew conventional wisdom and switch sides for the in the biggest tournament of the season to date.
”I was feeling I was hitting my forehand the hardest when I was hitting it inside out,” MacArthur said. “And she was saying she liked the inside out backhand. We tried it our first match today and it worked.”
Their biggest test came in the finals. PHS has a talented team as well, and they had challenged the Pirates in their first meeting of the year.
”I thought we were really confident when we played Princeton this time,” Wong said. “We knew how they were playing, so we took their weakness and played against it.
”They got a lot of really nice shots off us at the net last time, so we watched more carefully for them and we hit them right back. We were more confident with our shots. We didn’t hold back.”
The greater power paid off for the WW-P South duo. They enjoyed sharing a MCT title, and they are looking forward to playing more big matches together, though there’s always a chance of lineup changes if the Pirates get Ji back for the second half of the season.
”As of now, we’re together,” MacArthur said. “If Stephanie comes back, we don’t know. We’ve had to deal with a lot of changes. It’s been crazy.”