Castka Leads Bayport-Blue Point To 5th Straight Suffolk Small School Title
With six courts finished and the Suffolk County Small School Championship still hanging in the balance, Bayport-Blue Point remained confident. The one match left to determine the title was first singles, and the Phantoms had its top player and the Suffolk County singles champion Lily Castka.
That confidence never wavered, even when Castka found herself behind 5-7, 0-5 against Brooke Saracco, and on the brink of a defeat.
“In that first set, and in the second set, I was just pushing and wasn’t really playing my game,” said Castka. “Once I went down 0-5, I just told myself to fight, and hit through the ball, even if I miss. Just hit through the ball and keep moving my feet.”
Castka dug in, and began the arduous climb back from a set down 0-5 down, chipping away at the deficit one game at a time. With each game she won, her confidence rose and the cheers from her teammates grew louder.
The Bayport-Blue Point junior rattled off the next seven games of the second set to force a decider, and broke early to go ahead 2-0 to complete a run of nine straight games.
Saracco would earn the break back, and the two would exchange holds for the next several games. Until Saracco was serving at 5-6, and Castka locked in on the return, breaking serve to clinch the match, and seal the fifth straight Suffolk County Small School title for her team.
“It’s the training she puts in, and all the work she does to be ready for any situation,” Bayport-Blue Point head coach John Selvaggio said of Castka. “She’s not someone who gets too high or too low, she states even-keeled, and she had the right stuff today.”
Castka’s title-sealing victory would not have been possible had it not been for the wins from her teammates earlier in the day. First, Jordana Heller & Riley Lehmann won 6-2, 6-0 at third doubles to earn the first point.
But Ross School responded as Lola Dangin & Lillie Weiss won 6-2, 6-2 at first doubles, and Olivia Caruso notched a 6-1, 6-2 victory at second singles to put the Ravens ahead.
At second doubles, Eden Romano & Danielle Oleksiak were 6-4, 6-1 winners to even things up at 2-2.
“It was a pretty hard match, but we were able to pull through,” said Romano. “It was our first match together, but once we won that first game, we both realized we worked well together. We wanted to win for our team today and so we didn’t give up even after losing a few games in a row in the first set.”
The back-and-forth affair rolled on as Julia Marangon won 6-2, 6-3 at third singles to move Ross ahead 3-2, before the fourth doubles duo of Julie Wellems & Phoebe Brownie came back from a set down to win 6-7(3), 6-0, 6-0 to bring the Phantoms even.
The entire group of players, coaches and spectators gathered around the first singles court to watch Castka complete her comeback, and seal Bayport-Blue Point’s entry back into the Long Island Small School Championship.
“It takes everyone,” Castka said. “We have a lot of depth, and a lot of amazing players, from the top all the way down, we have players that we are all confident in.”
Selvaggio added:
“In order to beat a team like Ross, you have to win as many courts as we can by as little as possible, which means a lot of three setters and tiebreakers, like we saw today. There’s no other group that I’d rather go to battle with than this group of girls. I was handed a program that was well-established by the former coach. We have great leadership at the top, and every year we get a new group of girls who want to be as good as the previous year which creates a great cycle to be a part of.”
Bayport-Blue Point advances to the Long Island Championship against Cold Spring Harbor.
“We’re going to go out, play our best tennis and have fun,” Selvaggio concluded.
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