Northcoast Prep

NPA junior makes league history at NCS championships

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Northcoast Prep junior Lily Bazemore made some H-DNL history last week by becoming the first-ever league tennis player to win a North Coast Section championship.

The Herons standout won all four of her matches over two days in the Division-2 tournament and remarkably did not drop more than two games in any match.

She becomes the first H-DNL tennis player, boy or girl, to ever achieve the feat and she did it as a junior.

“It was one of the biggest mental challenges I faced because I felt like there was a lot of pressure,” she said.

If Bazemore felt the pressure, she didn’t show it with her play.

In the final, Bazemore comfortably defeated San Domenico’s Carly Amborn in dominating fashion, winning 6-2, 6-0.

“I think just staying in the present moment was really important,” she added. “Just focusing on this point right here and not looking too far ahead.”

Bazemore, who also recently won the H-DNL No. 1 singles championship to qualify for the NCS tournament, won three matches leading up to final, all of them in straight sets.

She opened tournament play on Monday with a 6-2, 6-0 win over Piedmont’s Carolina Romanczuk and followed that with a second-round victory over Lick Wilmerding’s Jocelyn Gursky by winning every game, 6-0, 6-0.

Bazemore continued to dominate in the semifinal round on Tuesday, defeating SF University’s Pipere Lim 6-2, 6-0 to qualify for the final later in the day.

According to an NPA press release, “Bazemore is the first NCS tennis champion from Humboldt in girls or boys (competition), singles or doubles, from Division 1 or Division 2, since the tournament began (1977 for girls and 1915 for boys).”

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