Bayport-Blue Point girls tennis tops Ross for Suffolk small school title
Bayport-Blue Point’s second singles Leila Rogers returns a shot during the Suffolk small school girls tennis finals between Bayport-Blue Point and Ross on Saturday Oct 26, 2024 at Smithtown East High School Credit: Bob Sorensen
First came the guile. Then came the guts. And in the end it turned out Bayport-Blue Point had plenty of each to claim another Suffolk County girls tennis small school championship.
Phantoms coach John Selvaggio provided the guile by designing a lineup that could be one win better than Ross coach Vinicius Carmo. And eighth graders Leila Rogers and Jordanna Heller provided the guts by coming through with singles victories in a strategy that hinged almost entirely on their play to deliver a 4-3 victory at Smithtown East.
“Iron sharpens iron and everyday at practice they’ve battled Suffolk County’s best,” Selvaggio said of Rogers and Heller. “They’ve proved themselves . . . and they had the trust of their teammates."
Rogers’ 6-3, 6-1 win at second singles and Heller’s 6-1, 6-4 win at third singles, combined with sophomore Lily Castka’s 6-0, 6-0 win at first singles, gave BBP a singles sweep and Suffolk County doubles champions senior Emilia Romano and sophomore Evie Romano rolled to a 6-0, 6-1 win at first doubles.
Bayport-Blue Point (18-0) has lost only eight individual matches in a spectacular season and now seeks to win its first Long Island championship. It meets Nassau County champ Cold Spring Harbor (8-8) for the Island Division II crown on Nov. 2 at Shoreham-Wading River. It’s the third straight year the two teams decided the Island title and CSH won the past two.
“We’re really confident this year,” Emilia Romano said. “We've been through it three times already. . . . I think we're ready this year.”
Heller’s win ended up being the clincher. She sped up her opponent by hitting a lot of ground strokes low over the net and with top spin to cut down reaction time. She got a service break in the sixth game for a 4-2 lead and broke serve again in the last game.
Rogers hit her stride late in the first set of her win. She won the final two games without dropping a point and continued to make winning shots in the second set.
Both are in their first season on the varsity and each felt the responsibility that was being placed on them.
“It’s not really easy to put it out [of one’s mind], but I understood what I had to do,” Rogers said.
“It feels really good I won — if I’d lost I felt like it would have been on me,” Heller said.
She added that she and Rogers, “We've been working really hard since, like, forever, and we really want to get on the team this year. It felt really good winning for the team.”
Ross (15-2) had several of its top players stationed in doubles as a strategy that came up just short. The doubles tandems of Lola Dangin and Sophia Kolberg, Olivia Caruso and Brook Saracco and Emilie Olsen and Valentina Sanchez all posted straight-set wins for the Ravens.
“I knew coming in, I had the pieces to win but living in the wild west of tennis, you never really know what the other coach is going to throw at you,” Selvaggio said.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.