Harborfields-Half Hollow Hills East girls tennis showdown halted until Friday
Hills East’s Madison Miller competes on Thursday. The match will be resumed Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. Credit: Peter Frutkoff
If there were any doubts about the stakes when Harborfields faced Half Hollow Hills East in girls tennis on Thursday, one only needed to spy Harborfields junior Zoe Sbarra-Vaughan and Thunderbirds eighth grader Anjali Raza.
The Tornadoes all went with eye black, but Sbarra-Vaughan went with the full war-paint smear on her cheeks and a black headband to boot. And Raza kept turning up the velocity on her forehand as a fourth singles victory came into sight.
Perfect images for a pair of teams that hadn’t lost a Suffolk I match all season and had an eye on the top seeding for the county team tournament? Absolutely. And it did produce a knockdown, drag-out battle.
But a final score will have to wait until Friday afternoon after the sun set on the competitors with Harborfields ahead 2-1 — two matches in a third set, one match going to a third set and one match in a second-set tiebreaker.
“These are two top-quality teams and we expected this would produce a bunch of matches that went to three sets,” Harborfields coach Jimmy Delevante said. “The biggest points are still to be played.”
The match will resume at Half Hollow Hills East at 4:45 p.m. on Friday. The Tornadoes, who arrived with a 10-0 division mark, got straight-set victories from Sbarra-Vaughan at first singles and from senior Isabella Frangione and junior Josie Rudloff at first doubles. Raza won in straight sets for Hills East, which came in 9-0.
“This was such an important match when you have your eyes on a championship,” said Sbarra-Vaughan, who won, 6-0, 6-1. “I really wanted to be consistent and I think I was today.”
Delevante called her performance “the best match she’s played all season.”
Raza was only called up from the junior varsity after the Thunderbirds lost a non-conference match to Bayport-Blue Point and has become a key part of the depth that is the cornerstone of Hills East’s success. She is 8-0 this season after winning, 7-6, 6-2.
“She’s been a perfect fit for playing in so many important matches,” T-birds coach Steve Farantello said. “Nothing fazes her. She saw she had a shot to win and went for it.”
“You could see my nerves in the first set, but I settled down,” Raza said.
The matches in progress are all nailbiters. When it picks up, Harborfields third doubles tandem of eighth grader Aya Deckman and junior Allie Bigelow are up one set and in a second-set tiebreaker against senior Brooke Lieberman and freshman Sami Heyman. Hills East freshman Christina Zhao leads senior Emma Kirchner in the third singles match, 3-2 in the third set. And at second singles, Tornadoes sophomore Hana Deckman is up on junior Angie Malik, 3-2 in the third set.
Hills East senior Rachel Neuman and freshman Emma Wilck won a second set against senior Victoria Frangione and junior Brianna Coakley to force a third set before the second doubles match was suspended.
"The first two matches ended for them, but it feels like we have some momentum,” Neuman said. “We need to keep the momentum into tomorrow.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
