Bears can’t finish off Eagles

Game, set and match as Harker pulled off its second upset in as many matches, downing the sixth-seeded Bears 4-3 in the quarterfinals of the Central Coast Section team tennis tournament Thursday.

“I saw it (the ball) in the net,” Williams said. “It was really close to the [net cord]. It was so dark. I just couldn’t see.”

Harker has been the surprise of the tournament. The second-place team out of the West Bay Athletic League and unseeded, the Eagles made the rest of CCS take notice when they knocked off No. 3 seed Cupertino Tuesday.

“My initial thought was we’d have a very decent chance of beating Harker,” M-A head coach Tom Sorenson said when he first learned of the Eagles’ upset of Cupertino.

But when he saw how Harker beat Cupertino, he knew his team would have its work cut out for it.

“We were hoping to catch a win at No. 4 singles or No. 3 doubles (for our fourth team point),” Sorenson said.

As the headlights of cars passed the Menlo-Atherton tennis courts and with dusk quickly transitioning to darkness, Williams was trying to keep her and her team’s hopes alive against the Eagles as she and Broweleit went at it for nearly three hours, during a match that seemed like an M-A rout early on that turned into a nail-biter.

The Bears dominated early, breezing to its first three — and only — points as Allison Brown (No. 1 singles), Ava Martin (No. 2 singles) and Charlie Smith (No. 3 singles) combined to lose only one game as they won their matches in under an hour.

But Harker returned the dominance in the doubles, sweeping all three matches in straight sets.

That left the match to be decided at No. 4 singles, a match that was timed not by the number of hits in a rally, but by minutes. Both Williams and Broweleit were content to hit baseline lobs for mind-numbingly long rallies. The two trading returns for 50, 60 strokes was the usual and 100-stroke rallies were not uncommon.

Facing the diminutive Williams, Broweleit’s strategy was two-fold: just keep hitting the ball back, waiting for a mistake, and forcing Williams further and further behind the baseline.

Williams was more than willing to engage in the first part of the plan. She, too, was playing the “return and wait for a mistake” game, but there were times she could not contend with the second.

Broweleit would consistently hit deep lobs that would take bounces as high as 7-8 feet, forcing Williams to back up.

But about seven strides from the baseline is the chain-link fence that surrounds the tennis courts at M-A. Williams’ returns got more and more shallow and Broweleit’s returns got deeper and deeper and more than once, the proximity of the fence got to Williams, causing unforced errors.

And yet, she stayed in the match. The two stayed on serve early in the first set, but Williams got a break to go up 4-2.

But Broweleit battled back, winning three games in a row to take a 5-4 lead and then broke Williams again to win the opening set 7-5.

Williams got an early break in the second set to go up 2-1. But Broweleit broke back in the sixth game and then held serve to take a 4-3 lead, but Williams won her next service game at deuce to tie the set at 4-all.

Williams seemed to grab the momentum and was poised to force a third set when she broke Broweleit for a 5-4 lead, but with the set on her racket, Williams couldn’t close out Broweleit. A midcourt volley winner from Broweleit capped a game that lasted eight minutes — which included one point that lasted more than two minutes by itself.

Facing deuce again, Broweleit hit the winner to tie the set at 5.

Broweleit took a 6-5 lead with a winner down the line to set up Williams’ final service game.

And she went down fighting. She lost the first three points of her serve, before battling back and winning the next three points.

And for the third time, Broweleit won the deuce point, the final one clinching the match for Harker.

“The team knows no one else on the team could go through what [Williams] did. … She’s willing to endure about anything … to give herself a chance to win,” Sorenson said. “All in all, it was a wonderful season for Menlo-Atherton.”

There will still be an Atherton school in the semifinals, however, as top-seeded Menlo School will take on No. 4 Palo Alto 11 a.m. Saturday at Lynbrook High School. Both Menlo and Palo Alto won their quarterfinal matches 7-0.

The other semifinal pits Harker against No. 2 St. Francis. The finals will be played 5:30 p.m. Saturday at Bay Club Courtside in Los Gatos.