Holy Angels’ Hess notches big state tournament win by Bob Scwalb special to The Record
Holy Angels junior Ashley Hess took another huge step towards this year’s NJSIAA singles championship, beating Northern Highlands’ Riya Ravi in Saturday’s state quarterfinals at Mercer County Park in West Windsor.
The second-seeded Hess topped No. 6 seed Ravi, 6-2 and 6-2, and will play Watchung Hills’ third-seeded Sydney Sharma in this morning’s semifinals.
“I’ve never played [Sharma] before and I haven’t seen too many of her matches,” Hess said. “But I’m just going to approach it the same way I approach all my matches. I’m just going to play my game and see how it goes.”
In beating her close friend and training partner Ravi for the third time this season (including the Bergen County Tournament large-schools finals), Hess said consistency was the key.
“There were lots of long points from the baseline early on and I was a little more consistent,” Hess said. “Later on, it came down to which one of us could take control of the points and be the aggressor. I feel like I did that a little better today.
Hess will need more of the same to beat Sharma, who topped Newark Academy’s ninth-seeded Alison Bader in the quarterfinals. The winner of that match will face the winner of the other semifinal featuring Vineland’s top-seeded Tess Fisher and Kent Place’s fourth-seeded Julia Anderson. The finals are slated for Oct. 21.
Last season, Hess played Fisher in the quarterfinals and lost an 11-9 super tiebreaker, played in lieu of a third set.
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“You can never look too far ahead,” Hess said of a potential rematch with Fisher. “I’m just going to focus on the match ahead of me and bring my A game.”
On the doubles courts, Dwight-Englewood’s fifth-seeded duo of Maddy Kachikian and Olivia Greenberg, Northern Highlands’ eighth-seeded pair of Chloe Decker and Charlotte Hagan, and Ridgewood’s 13th-seeded duo of Sarah Casale and Kaelie Kerner all advanced to today’s quarterfinals.
In Saturday’s Round of 16, Kachikian and Greenberg trailed Chatham’s Julia Gallop and Libby White, 0-3, but rallied to win 6-3 and 6-4. Decker and Hagan beat J.P. Stevens’ Ishani Kukami and Divya Talestra, 6-0 and 6-3, while Casale and Kerner topped Kent Place’s Kelcie Engles and Grace McGinley 6-3 and 6-3.