Marist junior tennis star Helena Klooster had a decision to make.<\/p>\n
Play high-school tennis?<\/p>\n
Or spend the fall playing U.S. Tennis Association events to improve her ranking and attract more college coaches?<\/p>\n
It was a tough choice, but Klooster decided to compete with the RedHawks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was deciding on what I should do,\u201d Klooster said. \u201cI finally decided to just do (high-school tennis) because it\u2019s fun. I\u2019m on\u00a0a team and it teaches me good teamwork skills. The season is so short, so I\u2019m like, why not?<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to work on what I needed to work on during the season. And, at state, there is good competition so I stayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her choice turned out to be a good one.<\/p>\n
Klooster made history on Oct. 25 becoming the first RedHawk to reach the IHSA state tennis tournament championship. She dropped a 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4 decision to York junior CJ Coan in the Class 2A title match at Hersey to finish second. She finished sixth as a freshman and fifth as a sophomore.<\/p>\n
With a year left in her high-school career, the Orland Park resident has cemented her legacy among Southwest Regional Publishing tennis players.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only three other area players reached a state title match \u2014 all from Lyons. Margie Lepsi won state titles in 1991 and 1993 and finished second in 1992.\u00a0\u00a0Lahari Yelamanchili won a title in 2015. Alex Chatt finished second in 2011.<\/p>\n
Klooster opened the state tournament with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over South Elgin\u2019s Abby Wolf.<\/p>\n
She then rallied past Stevenson\u2019s Kriti Mohan 1-6, 6-2, 10-4 before beating Asha Sarai of Hinsdale Central 6-4, 6-1.<\/p>\n
On the second day, Klooster won 6-7, 7-5, 6-3 over Downers Grove South\u2019s Gabby David in the quarterfinals before defeating New Trier\u2019s Julia Ludwig 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
The top local finisher apart from Klooster was Nazareth junior Elaine McNamara, who reached the consolation fifth round and went 4-2 in Class 1A.<\/p>\n
Running to sectionals<\/p>\n
There was a logjam of Morton runners vying for first place in the Class 3A Lyons Regional on Oct. 25.<\/p>\n
In a wild finish, Morton senior Orlando Sandoval took first with a time of 15 minutes, 00.31 seconds while senior teammate Alex Rodriguez was second with a 15:00.43 and junior Mustang Miguel Flores was third with a 15:00.70.<\/p>\n
They will have another chance to sort things out on Nov. 1 at the Hinsdale Central Sectional.<\/p>\n
Reavis\u2019s Santiago Chavez won the Class 3A Argo Regional title with a 14:55.07 and will run again at Hinsdale Central.<\/p>\n
\u00a0In Class 1A, Chicago Christian\u2019s girls team won the Class 1A McNamara Regional with 54 points \u2014 three better than runner-up Manteno. Senior Khira Moes led the Knights with third-place finish in 18:41.36.<\/p>\n
The Knights are at the Lisle Sectional on Nov. 1.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marist junior tennis star Helena Klooster had a decision to make. Play high-school tennis? Or spend the fall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-243659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}