In last week's tennis blog, I highlighted the early (and very limited) region tournament results, which surprisingly have already produced outcomes that hint to a wild state tournament later this month. In the past week, the coinciding spring breaks around the state kept the pace slow, but it's about to crank up. In Class AA-AAAAAAA, teams have just 10 days left to wrap up their region tournaments and complete their first round of the state playoffs; Class A-Private and Class A-Public are required to complete their first round matches by April 26. Here's a look around the classifications.
In Class AAAAAAA, the five-time defending champion Walton Lady Raiders are the undoubted queens of the court. The program has captured 15 state titles since 2001 and 16 since the GHSA began awarding solely team state titles in 1995. The Raiders did not repeat at the prestigious DecoTurf High School Championships last month, but they also did not send their full roster to the competition. Since 2007, Walton has seen 20 different girls sign tennis scholarships and have gained national recognition for multi-year streaks where not a single line dropped a set. There’s another program in Class AAAAAAA, however, that is trying to build off of their recent success and reach elite status. The Brookwood Lady Broncos have steadily improved and made deeper runs in the state tournament. The program reached the Sweet 16 in 2015, advanced to the Elite 8 last year, and reached the Final Four in 2017. Head coach Daniel Bowles and the Broncos will compete for the top seed out of Region 7-AAAAAAA April 10-11 at Rhodes Jordan Tennis Center at Lawrenceville.
It was an all-region 7 semifinals in Class AAAAAAA for both boys and girls last year. Those seeds were determined last week, and now the rest of the state will fill in the rest of the bracket this week. Defending girls champion Cambridge fell to Northview in the region tournament (as noted last week), but Cambridge did defeat defending Class AAAA champion North Oconee 5-4 in the DecoTurf HS Championships last month, proving the Bears are just as dangerous as they were last year when they rode the No. 2 seed to its second state crown since 2015.
In Class AAA, Westminster’s boys and girls continue cruising. The Wildcats swept Wesleyan team 5-0, 5-0 on April 5. Wesleyan finished runner-up on the girls Class A-Private side last season after falling to Brookstone 3-0. Brookstone looks solid once again, scoring a 3-2 win over Class AAAAAAA’s North Paulding last month; North Paulding was the only team that got a point off Walton last season on the Raiders’ way to the title.
