Girls tennis: Farmington’s doubles teams lift Phoenix past Layton to gain Region 1 edge
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- Farmington High’s Anna Frey hits a serve during a high school tennis match at Layton High on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022.
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- Layton High’s Tia Christopulos hits a backhand during a high school tennis match against Farmington on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022 at Layton High School.
LAYTON — For the better part of two hours, a car alarm originating somewhere north of the Layton High tennis courts incessantly blared and served as an unwanted soundtrack to Layton and Farmington’s girls tennis match.
When the car alarm mercifully stopped, the soundtrack of the tennis match became loud, tense cheers between the top two teams in Region 1.
The cheering that came from Farmington’s camp after its No. 2 doubles team of Hannah Harmsen and Ruby Muller beat Layton’s Savanna Lee and Lilia Packard 1-6, 6-3, 6-1 to clinch a 3-2 team victory may have been loud enough to restart the aforementioned car alarm.
That’s because the win means Farmington (8-0 Region 1) now has a two-game lead on defending region champion Layton (6-2 Region 1) in the region standings with four matches left, and is within touching distance of its first girls tennis region championship in the school’s brief history.
Both of Farmington’s doubles teams lost the first set of their matches, then rallied to clinch the team win.
“I feel like we weren’t communicating as much (in the first set), we weren’t even like talking, and that definitely changed in the second and third set,” Muller said. “We were trying not to lose instead of trying to win.”
The Lancers led Thursday’s match 2-1 after winning two of the three singles matches and both Lancers doubles teams had won the first set of their respective matches.
Things pointed Layton’s way, then both Farmington doubles teams produced gritty, comeback efforts.
“We’ve played this team (doubles) twice and beat them pretty good, so we were super scared to play the second set,” Harmsen said.
Two courts over and about 20 minutes before Harmsen and Muller won, the Phoenix’s No. 1 doubles team of Kate Geddes and Eliza Peterson fell behind Layton’s Molly Burnett and Jordan Hicks in the first set, then rallied back for a 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 win.
“It was so fun especially because No. 1 doubles, they’ve been a team for a couple years now and in the past they would’ve just lost that match, they would’ve mentally not found a way to fight back,” Farmington coach Kristina Maggio said. “For both of those to find a way to fight back was just huge, I’m so proud of them.”
On Aug. 16, Farmington beat Layton 3-2 with wins in both doubles matches and No. 1 singles. Thursday’s match went the same way.
Farmington’s freshman phenom Anna Frey beat Layton’s Tia Christopulos 6-0, 7-5 at No. 1 singles.
Frey is the No. 14 ranked freshman in the nation, according to TennisRecruiting.net, and she’s the prohibitive state-title favorite at 6A No. 1 singles and a probable Division-I college tennis player in the future.
Frey seemingly made every shot she tried to hit in the first set, whether it was a backhand down the line or a forehand pass at the net.
Christopulos responded with a well-played second set and capitalized on an increasing number of errors by Frey. Christopulos served for the set leading 5-4, but Frey won the next three games to win in straight sets.
Layton’s Victoria Cooksey and Tana Christopulos comfortably won in straight sets at No. 2 and No. 3 singles, respectively, turning the focus to doubles.
In a deviation from years past, there won’t be a season-ending Region 1 tournament this year. That’s because the way tennis players qualify for the state tournament has changed.
Instead of a player’s finish at the region tournament dictating if that player qualifies or not, the UHSAA’s using something called the Universal Tennis Rating to seed players in the state tournament.
UTR is described as a worldwide tennis rating index that attempts to rank every single player in the world, regardless of age and regardless of whether it’s a pro player or a twice-weekly recreation player, on a scale of 1-16.5.
The rating, put together by a proprietary mathematical algorithm, is composed using results of a person’s most recent 30 matches.
High school tennis players in Utah are allowed a maximum of 16 matches in the high school season, according to the UHSAA handbook. Current UTR numbers then, in theory, can include high-level tournament matches in the summer and spring, which inherently favors those who can afford to play an already-expensive sport at a high level.
As of Thursday morning, Frey’s UTR was listed as 9.41, a full 1.34 points higher than the No. 2 player in the state, and Tia Christopulos’ UTR is listed as 6.96.
A cursory glance at current Division I women’s tennis players reveals their UTR to be around the 8-11 range. For further context, Polish world No. 1 player Iga Swiatek’s UTR is 13.25.
In the spring for boys tennis, the UHSAA used an RPI seeding system, like what’s used in some of the other team sports, to seed the state tournaments and it produced some mixed results, leading to the switch to UTR.
Connect with reporter Patrick Carr via email at pcarr@standard.net, Twitter @patrickcarr_ and Instagram @standardexaminersports.