LADY JACKETS WIN STATE CHAMPIONSHIP!
Aleah Parker
Lexie Girtman
Demi Rush
Cori Mims
Presley Cox
Presley Cox
Noel Munoz
Cori Mims celebrates match deciding victory
Jeff Davis High School’s girls tennis team won the Georgia High School Association’s 2023 Class 2A State Tennis Championship Saturday at the Rome Tennis Center at Berry College.
The Lady Jackets squeaked out a 3-2 win over Berrien High School in the championship match. Jeff Davis and Berrien were both representatives of Region 1-AA, the Lady Jackets as region champions and the Lady Rebels as region runner-up. Jeff Davis defeated Berrien for the region championship by the same 3-2 score. The two teams worked their way through the tournament brackets to emerge as the two teams in the championship round out of the 32 teams in the playoffs.
Playing for Jeff Davis in the finals were No. 1 singles Lexi Girtman, No. 2 singles Cori Mims, No. 3 singles Demi Rush, No. 1 doubles Noel Munoz and Aleah Parker, and No. 2 doubles Presley Cox and Ava Coleman.
And prospects look good for next season as there were no seniors among the Lady Jackets playing in the finals. Girtman, Rush, Munoz and Parker are all juniors, Cox is a sophomore and Mims and Coleman are freshmen.
When play opened Saturday at 9 a.m, a faint mist was still in the air from an early morning fog.
Rush’s match at No 3 singles was the first to be completed as she easily disposed of her opponent. At the doubles end of the playing courts, both Lady Jacket teams fell in close matches as Berrien took a 2-1 lead.
That left Girtman and Mims on the courts at No. 1 and No. 2 singles with JD needing wins in both matches to pull out the victory. At that point Girtman had won one set and was just starting the second, and Mims, after winning her first set, was on the way to losing her second set.
Girtman, playing her normally patient, long-term style, won her second set to get the victory as she let out a scream of hard-fought victory.
Mims, meanwhile, was in a back-and-forth battle with her Lady Rebel opponent in the third and final set, and finally eased into a 6-5 lead, needing to be ahead by two to get the win. With her Lady Jacket teammates and the crowd of Jeff Davis fans looking on anxiously, the freshman battled her way to the victory and the celebration began.L
