Three years ago, Delta girls tennis went to the IHSAA state finals when the program’s current seniors were freshmen.
Three years later, those seniors punched tickets to state again and will finish their careers where they started. The Eagles traveled to Fort Wayne for the Homestead semi-state to take on the host Spartans in a top-20 matchup — No. 15 Delta vs. No. 18 Homestead — according to the Indiana High School Tennis Coaches Association poll.
Delta won the match, 4-1, Saturday, May 30, to clinch the seventh state finals appearance in school history and first since 2023.
“We’ve got a lot of experience, but I think our best characteristic is just our ability to be locked in at practice day after day,” Delta coach Tim Cleland said. “We have a pretty good understanding of what we do well, and we try to stick with that. It sounds simple, but not everybody understands what they do well and what they struggle with.”
While Delta plays plenty of experience with five seniors out of seven varsity players, their opponent was quite the opposite with zero seniors.
No. 1 singles was the only match where the Spartans had an advantage in experience with junior Caroline Meier facing Delta freshman Sophie Crabtree. While she did manage to win a few games this time, Crabtree was the Eagles’ only lost match as Meier won, 6-2, 6-4, and advanced to the individual singles state finals.
Just as they have been all postseason, Delta’s doubles teams were dominant to give the Eagles the advantage in the match. Junior Alexa Bratton and senior Kate Manor won 6-2, 6-1 at No. 1 doubles over Homestead junior Nadia Cowan and sophomore Emma Cook, while seniors Elizabeth Bamidele and Rowan Hinds won 6-2, 6-4 at No. 2 doubles.
Manor has played No. 1 doubles since her freshman year when she was on Delta’s last state qualifying team, and as the all-time winningest player in program history with 95 career victories, she’s learned to appreciate each and every one.
“Semi-state, we haven’t been there since freshman year, so honestly, going into it just makes it a lot more special,” Manor said. “Being with Alexa, after winning against Westfield, it’s just awesome to keep winning and keep going. We’re really starting to pick up how we play with each other, really keeping the energy up.”
Not far behind Manor on the Delta girls tennis all-time wins leaderboard is Hinds, who won her 89th career match at No. 2 doubles. The Eagles gave away a 3-1 lead in the second set but won the last three games to clinch a 6-4 win and the match. The duo improved to 25-0 on the year, a record which Bamidele attributed to Hinds’ nerves of steel.
“First set, it was 6-2, trying to come out more aggressive, I was definitely a little nervous and had some jitters,” Bamidele said. “Just having Rowan there with her cool, calm, collected demeanor really helped. We just kept it going, and then second set, we had a bit of a kerfuffle when we were up 3-1 and Homestead, like we expected, wasn’t going to back down. They kept fighting back and got it to a point where it was 3-4 for them.
“Having our coaches behind us, our teammates telling us, ‘You got this, just breathe,’ and switching up our game plan a little bit, that helped us take it back to 4-4, then 5-4, and from there, we just kept fighting, playing smart but not safe.”
At No. 3 singles, Delta senior Stella Sieber and Homestead freshman Julia Hansen produced the only three-set match of the day. Sieber started strong by taking the first set, 6-1, but then gave up a 6-3 loss in the second set. The doubles teams had just given Delta a 2-1 lead when Sieber’s third set began, and the first-year varsity player handed the Eagles the semi-state title with a 6-0 set that Cleland called “nearly flawless.”
Meanwhile, the most exciting match of the day came at No. 2 singles, where Delta senior Olivia Marshall faced Homestead sophomore Natalie Christoff.
Marshall claimed the first set, 7-5, but the second set got dicey as she trailed by as much as 4-1. Despite facing set point twice, Marshall battled back to 6-6 and force a tiebreaker. Christoff had given her some trouble with a very hard slice, but Marshall focused on keeping the ball deep to avoid setting up those slice opportunities and was able to rally back as a result.
Marshall would eventually win the tiebreak for a 7-5, 7-6 (3) victory.
“I think the Westfield match really gave me confidence going into the semi-state match because I just proved to myself that I could do it in a tough match when it really comes down to it,” Marshall said. “Just thinking about the little things I can do, one point at a time, anything I can do to make my team go to the next round.”
Marshall and Sieber were both freshmen the last time Delta girls made it to state in 2023, but neither of them were varsity level players at that point. Bamidele was also a JV player that year, while Bratton was in eighth grade and Crabtree in sixth (though Crabtree attended Hauser at the time). Their growth in three short years has allowed them to go from state finals spectators to competitors.
Delta is the smallest public school left standing in the IHSAA girls tennis state championship hunt with 825 students. To reach the state finals, they’ve taken down two significantly larger schools with highly-ranked programs in Westfield (3,064 students) and Homestead (2,345 students).
“It’s fantastic because it’s hard to reach that level. It’s a single-class sport, and only eight teams make it out of 310,” Cleland said. “You can be really good and still not make it, as a lot of teams are finding out here in the last week. It’s never a guarantee. We’ve had a couple of difficult matches here in the last few days, even today, there was a point where it was still up for grabs. Homestead made some good runs at us, and we had to dig pretty deep.”
A similar story awaits at state finals, where Delta will meet No. 8 Munster (1,474 students) at North Central High School. The Eagles and Mustangs will face off at 10 a.m. on Friday, June 5.
Contact Cade Hampton via email at cbhampton@usatodayco.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CadeHamp10.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Delta girls tennis tops Homestead for IHSAA semi-state championship