After failing to advance to the finals in 2017, Cherry Hill East’s talented girls tennis team added another trophy to the program’s crowded trophy case
Perhaps it was fitting that the South Jersey Group 4 championship didn’t come down to Pallavi Goculdas’ match with Egg Harbor Township’s Emily Manzo.
Goculdas, Cherry Hill East High School’s №1 singles player and one of South Jersey’s top tennis players overall, was unable to play this time a year ago. She had a wrist injury and as a result everyone in the Cougars lineup had to shift up a spot.
Cherry Hill East lost at each of its three singles positions, dropping a 3–2 defeat to Vineland in the semifinal round of the 2017 South Jersey Group 4 tournament.
Flash forward a year later and the Cougars clinched their third sectional title in four years before Goculdas finished her match. And boy did she finish.
When senior Sophia Liang scored the final point of a two-set first singles match — on a play when her doubles teammate, Michaela Kennedy, whiffed on her own return before the ball got to Liang — Cherry Hill East had claimed each of the first three matches that went final to seal the South Jersey Group 4 title.
“She’s always there for me,” Kennedy joked of the final play, which clinched a 7–5, 6–3 win. “It’s our dynamic.”
Cherry Hill East ended up winning the other two matches, too, celebrating their Group 4 title in style with a clean-sweep 5–0 victory.
“To win it 5–0 was a nice thing,” Cherry Hill East coach Mary Jewett said. “To have every girl have a victory. It’s a nice thing. I always walk a way (after a win) and when somebody (individually) loses it just (doesn’t sit well). But nobody lost. So that means a lot to me.”
“For it to finally happen, it’s really a big accomplishment,” said Liang, a senior who wasn’t on varsity when the Cougars last won in 2016. “It means a lot.”
If you just happened to scan the final result of the sectional final via a boxscore or checked for the score on your phone, you got shortchanged. The sectional final had to be one of the more tense 5–0 matches in recent history.
Other than junior Mari Kimenker’s third singles match, in which she won 6–0, 6–0, the games were hotly contested and the scores were close, with Cougars and Eagles players going back and forth in gaining control.
“I thought we were going to lose 4–1,” Jewett whispered nervously afterward with a laugh.
Some of the nervousness came as a result of a large portion of the crowd at Cherry Hill East watching the match at center court, between Goculdas and EHT’s Emily Manzo. The two had squared off exactly two weeks earlier in the semifinals of the the South Jersey Interscholastic Championships, where the Cougars junior won in straight sets, 6–1, 6–4.
But Manzo came out with a purpose this time and clearly sent Goculdas to the brink. When Goculdas finally did walk off the court, the first thing she said to her teammates was the predicament she was in and was almost in disbelief herself that she managed to pull off a win.
“I was down 6–1, 5–3,” she said, her eyes growing big.
With defeat just one measly game away, Goculdas rallied back to beat Manzo, 2–6, 7–6, 10–5.
“She was done,” Jewett said. “And then she wasn’t done. We speak and we speak. She doesn’t even know how good she is. Sometimes she doesn’t play with all of her confidence and just thinks that the (other) girl is better than her. But she came through and proved she can do it.”
“Last time I played her I won easily, so this time I felt like I was under more pressure with the state finals,” Goculdas said. “I definitely felt like I had to focus more. She came out and played really well. I just had to change my mindset and become even more positive. … I felt like, “I have nothing to lose now.” The worst thing that could happen is I could lose the match. So instead of that, let’s be more positive.”
How exactly does a high school kid (who just turned 17 a day earlier) manage to gain confidence in a match they’re one game away from losing? Don’t most teenagers struggle to be that mentally tough?
“My dad and my mom, they’re always positive,” she said, crediting Ketan and Kavita Goculdas. “My dad when he’s watching, he’s always cheering me on. I could be down 6–0, 5–0 and he’ll still be clapping for me. So I definitely think he’s a big factor, I just picture him clapping for me.”
Second singles Sanjana Doshi had a similarly tense battle with Samantha Phung, 7–5, 7–6 while the second doubles team of Naomi Korn and Landen Tennenbaum scored a 6–3, 6–4 win in the second match to come off the court for the victorious Cougars.
“I guess it was a little nerve-racking at first, but as soon as (a few of us) won the first set, I believed in us,” Kimenker said. “It means the world. We definitely had a lot of motivation because we wanted to get the win we couldn’t get last year. We were super motivated.”
Cherry Hill East had just two seniors on the court in the sectional final; it returns all three singles players in 2019.
“This is definitely just the start,” Kimenker said.
