Tennis: Ritger, Shawhan and Chipp headed to state

Having just won the school's first regional title in girls' tennis since before Amelia Ritger was even born, the Tiger freshman was about as low key as she's been all season.

"I'm pretty excited," Ritger said after defeating Galena's Hannah Llop 6-1, 6-4 in the Northern 4A Regional Championship title match. "I was just hoping to make state. I wasn't worried so much about first place."

Ritger, along with the boys' doubles team of Keagan Chipp and Robert Shawhan qualfied for this weekend's state championships. Chipp and Shawhan took third in the doubles bracket.

Ritger ran her record to 32-0 with impressive wins in both the finals and semifinals. Lisa Chacon (1989) was the last Douglas tennis player to win a regional.

Ritger fended off a late rally from Llop to claim the regional title.

"It's scary how well we know each other," Ritger said. "I've played Hannah a number of times over the last two years. We just went into this as more of a friendly match than anything."

Their knowledge of each other came through in the way the match played out.

Llop spent the majority of the time attempting to work Ritger side-to-side with cross court shots to keep her on the run, which disrupted Ritger's ability to control the tempo of the game.

Ritger, on the other hand, lived off of attacking Llop's backhand side, so much so that at one point in the match Ritger had scored four consecutive points by forcing error's to Llop's backhand side.

"I haven't had to run that much in a while," Ritger said. "I'm pretty tired. I know I need to work out a lot heading into state to get ready for it. I'm going to keep playing my game and we'll see how it works out."

Ritger's game worked plenty well at the regionals. One coach best described her as a human punching bag, alluding to the freshman's uncanny ability to take whatever her opponent could throw her direction and send it straight back, usually in a slower, softer fashion.

Nowhere was that as well displayed as it was in her semifinal match against Wooster's Diana Kovaltchouk, probably the most powerful player in the tournament, whom Ritger had beaten 6-0 in her varsity debut at the beginning of the season.

With Saturday's match tied at one early on, Ritger took a lead by outlasting Kovaltchouk in a game that went to four dueces and then took control by forcing errors on each of the next game's points to take a quick 3-1 lead.

She used a deceptive top-spin lob with devastating effectiveness to frustrate Kovaltchouk's power game at the base line and send her running for the back whenever she tried to approach the net.

Ritger again earned all her points on errors in the fifth game and churned on ahead to take the match having won 11-straight games.

While the top-spin lob was her most common weapon Saturday afternoon, she broke out a number of other tools, including a couple of sharp volleys at the net and a pretty one-handed back hand to make a handful of saves against Llop's tricky cross-court strategy, to keep her opponents in check.

Shawhan and Chipp punched their ticket to state with a victory in the third place match over Galena's No. 2 duo, John Baldwin and Joey Prescott " the No. 4 seed out of the High Desert League.

The pair took a 6-3, 6-3 decision to become Douglas' first state qualifiers in boys' tennis since Sam Chacon in 1985, a span of 22 years.

In the semifinals, Shawhan and Chipp ran into the No. 1 seed in the tournament, Galena's Collin Davis and Gavin Deller, the eventual region champions.

Davis and Deller emerged as 7-5, 6-0 victors, but the Douglas duo had the Galena pair tied at 5 in the first set, but the Grizzlies pushed ahead for wins in the next eight game to advance to the finals.

Shawhan and Chipp have a 7-1 record as a pair while Chipp went 24-5 as a singles player during the season and Shawhan went 21-2.