Daily Journal Athletes of the Week: Hillsdale’s Quinlan Belen Henroid and Eden Jacobson

So, when the No. 2 doubles match against El Camino’s Mariah Lejender and Sofia David was the last match being played, Belen Henroid and Jacobson didn’t know the team score was tied 3-3 as they battled into a third and decisive super-tiebreak set.

“Oh my God, I almost had a heart attack that day,” Nachtigall said.

Nachtigall’s worries were understandable. Last Tuesday, two days prior to the almost heart attack, Hillsdale knocked off Woodside, the first place team in the Peninsula Athletic League Ocean Division, to move into a tie for the top spot in the standings. With three regular-season matches to go, all the Lady Knights had to do was win out against three teams they’d already defeated during the first round of league play to do no worse than a share of the Ocean Division crown.

The last time Hillsdale won a league championship in 2013, Jacobson was in the first grade, and Belen Henroid was in kindergarten. And a loss in their individual match would have meant a loss for Hillsdale, and bye-bye league championship.

“I didn’t really know and we didn’t know that our team was tied 3-3,” Jacobson said. “So, we felt the pressure because we wanted to win, but we didn’t know the amount of pressure there was because we didn’t know ... that if we lost it would be a big problem.”

“Afterwards when we looked, we were like: ‘Thank God they did not tell us, because if we knew beforehand, we would have been much more stressed out,” Belen Henroid said.

Adding to the drama was the unlikely pairing of a senior, Jacobson, who has played predominantly with sophomore Liana Macomber for the past two years, and a junior, Belin Henroid, who only took up the sport this year, and bought her first tennis racquet just days prior to Hillsdale’s summer workouts.

“I started this summer,” said Belen Henroid, who ran cross country in the fall of 2023 as a freshman before being convinced by friends to switch to tennis, but had to wait a year after suffering an ankle injury playing soccer as a sophomore. “I got a racquet the week before summer training, and I showed up to every summer training I could ... and I’ve just been showing up ever since, doing my best to improve.”

Hillsdale’s other two doubles teams took care of business early Thursday. No. 1s Julia Moir and Leila Alizadeh remained undefeated on the year with a 6-1, 6-4 victory; and No. 3s Rebecca Mao and Kalea Kim breezed in straight sets 6-0, 6-0. Things got interesting at No. 2 singles, though, as Hillsdale’s Emma Yuen squeaked by with a super-tiebreak victory of her own, 6-4, 3-6, 10-8.

Meanwhile, on the No. 2 doubles court, Belin Henroid and Jacobson battled through not one, but two tiebreak sets, in their eventual 7-6(4), 5-7, 13-11 victory.

“I hadn’t practiced for like five days, and I was pretty shaky,” said Jacobson, who missed Tuesday’s match due to being sidelined with an illness. “I pulled through. ... For some reason I gained a lot of energy during the game ... so I think that definitely played a factor.”

Having met freshman year in Mr. (Chris) Stallings’ AP Biology class, though, Belin Henroid and Jacobson proved to be quick studies on the tennis court as well. After rebounding from a 6-5 deficit in the first set, Jacobson chose the winning defensive rotation at deuce.

“If we would have lost that deuce, then they would have won the first set,” Belen Henroid said. “You’re allowed to choose who receives (serve) the deuce, and so we looked at each other, and we were like: ‘Who should take it?’ And she was like: ‘I think you should take it.’ And it worked out because the girl ended up double faulting. So, we won the point and we ended up going to a tiebreak, and we ended up winning the tiebreak.”

“I’d been noticing throughout the match that he serves had been a little bit faulty, especially on Quinlan’s side,” Jacobson said. “So, it was honestly just a luck guess, but I was like: ‘Based on the data from what I’ve seen, I guess we’ll take that shot.’”

Then came the third set drama, but not before Belin Henroid and Jacobson had their backs against the wall again, this time trailing 9-7 in the super-tiebreaker.

“I think we both just locked in,” Jacobson said. “We both just decided it’s now or never.”

Now, Hillsdale need win out this week to earn the program’s third all-time PAL title. Nachtigall’s Knights shared the 2013 PAL Bay Division championship with Carlmont, and won the PAL Ocean title outright in 2005.

“I was so nervous,” Nachtigall said. “And when we finished, I hugged them so hard.”