PUEBLO — When a high school freshman athlete competes at the varsity level, people talk. When she wins a No. 1 singles state championship in Class 4A, heads turn.
Turning heads is exactly what Sammie Watson, a freshman from Kent Denver, did all weekend. Going into Saturday’s title match, she had lost only two games during the entire tournament, and she wasn’t surprised by her performance.
“My confidence is pretty high,” Watson said before the match. “I expected a lot of myself coming into this tournament.”
Watson was set to take on Fountain Valley junior Clarke Tatje, who was no stranger to the limelight. Tatje took third place in last year’s state tournament.
The girls weren’t strangers to each other’s games. They played a match last summer that Watson won in straight sets. But, as Kent Denver coach Gay West said, “High school tennis is a whole different animal.”
Both girls’ game plans going into the match was to rally, as both consider themselves (and each other) to be good on ground strokes.
Tatje took the first set 6-3, and had the freshman frustrated.
“I was making a lot of unforced errors that I don’t normally make,” Watson said. “She was just on fire. She was attacking more and was more aggressive (than my previous opponents).”
Watson turned her game around quickly. She held serve all four times in the second set and broke Tatje’s twice, promptly gaining the momentum while taking the second set 6-1.
“We were both rallying really well in the first set,” Tatje said. “She really picked up her game in the second set, and I made some unforced errors.”
Watson rode that momentum to a 6-2 third-set victory and a state championship. Oddly for a freshman, she said it wasn’t the biggest match she had been in. It was apparent when she calmly shook her opponent’s hand, and showed no emotion until her teammates mobbed her on the court.
For an encore presentation, “another state title would be cool,” she said. With three years left, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
It also was a very calm day for the Niwot squad at City Park. Seven of the girls were competing on the final day of the tournament, three singles players and four doubles players. They each had the opportunity at a state title, but they already had the team title locked up after the second day of the tournament.
The team members were so calm, they could be seen playing a mixed version of tennis and hockey with their coaches minutes before they would each take the court.
The team captured the school’s first individual girls tennis state titles, by No. 2 singles player Claire Runge and the No. 3 doubles tandem of Whitney Fredericks and Whitney Vaswig.
