Lexington beats Lincoln-Sudbury and repeats as champion

CAMBRIDGE No. 5 Lexington (24-1) entered a rare state when the girls tennis team defeated Lincoln-Sudbury 4-1 in the Division 1 state final at the duPont Tennis Courts on the MIT campus. .

In a rematch of last year’s state final, Lexington proved to be the better team for the second straight season and can now claim back-to-back titles for the first time in school history. Minuteman now owns three state tennis championships, including one in 1975.

No. 1 and No. 2 singles stars Diya Patchamuthu and Kyra McCandless cruised to wins to pace the Minutemen from the start.

Patchamuthu secured a 6-1, 6-1 win over Emily Naum, while McCandless defeated Lia Swire 6-0, 6-1 in straight sets as the sophomore tandem set things up nicely for Lexington head coach Chance Fechtor. .

“Very dominant and as you saw, (McCandless) hardly gives up plays and they’re both anchors of the team,” Fechtor said. In reality, everyone has to pull their weight because you never know when they’re going to have a bad day. But knowing that we have this power up there gives everyone else a little more confidence.

Lexington was equally impressive in singles as Jessica Dai and Kiki Reddy beat Nina Gill and Asha Nagel 6-2, 7-6 (7-5), while Aashna Sahani and Sally Choi won in straight sets 7-5. Victory over Heather Naum and Camille Butters 6-1.

The Minuteman avenged their only regular season loss of the season against #1 ranked Boston Latin as they advanced to the finals with a 3-2 semifinal victory that finally resurrected the now two-time champion.

Dai credited the team’s camaraderie and following the season-long Game Plan built by Coach Fechtor for their recent success.

The main thing is that everyone supports each other and we had a lot of moments like what if this player gets injured and what are we going to do with our lineup, but a lot of people all think together, said Dai, who is one of the two senior captains along with Sahan.

We focused on how we were going to put our best foot forward and challenge ourselves. I know in the Boston Latin quarterfinals it was a really tough match, and we thought we’d change things, but we wanted to try again, put our all (into it) because we knew we could do it.