Spring Fling bound: Vucic vaults into state tournament
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Vucic, a senior with the Lady Pioneer tennis team, mowed down a pair of would-be challengers Tuesday at the Lakewood Country Club in Tullahoma to capture the Region 4-AAA singles championship and a berth in the TSSAA state tournament.
The state championships will be played at The Baylor School in Chattanooga beginning Wednesday. As the Region 4 champion, Vucic will meet the winner of Region 6-AAA — which is made up of schools from the Nashville and Franklin area — in Wednesday’s opening round.
Vucic, an exchange student from Yugoslavia, ran her perfect record to 21-0 with Tuesday’s championship win, downing Tullahoma’s Diana Bratcher 6-2, 6-1. The WCHS senior’s only trouble came with her service game, which was hampered at times during the match by strong winds.
Vucic lost the second game of the championship match’s first set after committing three double faults, and battled back to deuce in Game 6 before falling short. But with her teammates cheering her on, she won her next five games, faltering only once in the second set before winning the final three games to become the first WCHS player to reach the state finals since Jamie Caten accomplished that task in 1999.
Bratcher reached the finals by defeating White County’s Jensen Swindell in three sets. Swindell finished runner-up to Vucic in last week’s District 7-AAA finals.
Vucic’s spot in the championship match came via an almost-flawless performance against Lawrence County’s Tasha Miele.
After sweeping the first set 6-0, clinching the deciding game with back-to-back aces, Vucic failed to break Miele’s serve just once in the final set on her way to a 6-1 win.
Wednesday’s quarterfinal round is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. CDT, with the semifinals set for 3 p.m. The individual championships are scheduled for Thursday morning, May 23.