HOOD RIVER — Hood River Valley will send a girls doubles team and a singles player to this week’s OSAA Class 5A state tennis championships.
Coach Peg Bogard’s Eagles were led by the runner-up finish of doubles team Jena Hager and Poppy Mooney, both seniors, and the second-place finish of senior Kendall Sales at last week’s Northwest Oregon Conference (NWOC) district tourney. The tournament concluded May 15 at Parkrose High School, where HRV finished second as a team behind La Salle Prep.
The top four singles players and doubles teams qualified for the 2025 state tourney, May 23-24 in Portland and Beaverton.
Sales and her singles teammates lived up to their billing at district, as all four HRV entrants advanced to the quarterfinals. Sales, the No. 3 seed, led the way with straight set wins in her first four matches. In the semifinals, she beat No. 2-seed Trina Dinh of host Parkrose, 7-6, 6-4. That put her in the final against three-time defending state champion, Kennedy Harris, of La Salle Prep. Harris, who will compete next season at the University of Portland, won in straight sets; Dinh, who competed at state in 2023 and 2024, finished third.
Also in singles, Emily Doss, Zoe Aiken, and Sylvia Moores won their first two matches before losing in the quarterfinals. Aiken’s opening-match win came against No. 4 seed Samira Huaripata of Parkrose, in a 6-3, 7-6 performance.
In doubles play, Hager and Mooney didn’t lose any games through two rounds and then won in the quarterfinals 6-2, 6-2 over Canby’s Zabdy Gomez and Katie Spillum. The second-seeded HRV team then survived a come-from-behind, three-set thriller in the semifinals over No. 3 seeds Julia Tatsumi, a 2024 state tourney competitor, and Teagan Hamilton of Wilsonville, 6-7, 6-4, 6-2. Top seeds Avalon Donnelly and Kaitlin Carter of La Salle Prep topped the Eagle pair in the final, 6-1, 6-4.
Two of the other three HRV doubles teams advanced to the quarterfinals. Sixth-seeded Hayden Faaborg and Anna Dalbey won two straight-set matches before losing to Tatsumi and Hamilton, 7-5, 6-4. Charlotte Fuller and Grace Kerr lost just four games in their first two matches before falling to top seeds Donnelly and Carter.
HRV’s Olivia Millikin-Spray and Ava Giordano lost in the first round to the No. 4-seeded team of Kim Saechao and Kaylee Tran of Parkrose, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3. But the Eagle pair rebounded in the consolation bracket, advancing through three rounds before losing in the consolation championship, 6-2, 6-3, to Rita LiLan Tran and Kyra Nguen of La Salle Prep.
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