Quick, name a sport in which a team is composed of two athletes. There
aren’t many, with doubles competition in tennis standing out. It’s a very simple
concept: two players, competing together, working in concert, anticipating each
other’s moves, reading each other’s minds.
The mind-reading part of the equation can be even easier when the doubles
partners are also siblings. Case in point: Nana and Fatemeh Vang of Blake, who
captured the Class A doubles state championship Friday at Reed-Sweatt Family
Tennis Center in Minneapolis.
The Vangs – Nana is a senior and Fatemeh a ninth-grader – defeated
senior Greta Johnson and ninth-grader Chloe Alley of Minnehaha Academy 6-0, 6-2
in the title match.
The Blake duo’s championship didn’t come after years, or even
months, of playing doubles together. They were the Bears’ No. 1 (Nana) and No.
2 (Fatemeh) singles players during the regular season before becoming a doubles
team in the Section 4 playoffs. Nana and then-senior doubles partner Allyson
Jay were the state runner-up in Class AA a year ago.
“Allyson was amazing,” Nana said. “She's
a year older than me and she graduated. It's a perfect time (to play with Fatemeh). This
has always been my dream, she's my sister. Tennis is everything for us and I
really appreciate her doing this with me.”
Nana is indeed the big sister on the
court, exhorting, urging on and congratulating Fatemeh. They frequently talk
strategy, but Nana also knows when to provide what she called “tough love” and “soft
love.”
“With a lot of doubles teams, it's
not that they're good individually, it's that they make each other better,” Nana
said. “If my sister needs some tough love, that's what I want to do. If she
needs some soft love, that's what she needs. Being on a doubles team doesn't
mean taking over the net, it means what can you do to help your partner? It
took me a while to learn that, but with her it's really easy.”
Fatemeh said her sister’s tips “definitely
help. I get negative a lot and she's always there to pull me back up.”
There weren’t many negative moments
in Friday’s match, or at any point during the two-day doubles competition. The
Vangs, top-seeded among 16 teams, opened play with a 6-0, 6-2 win over Madisyn
Claseman and Denaley Hanson of New London-Spicer, then defeated Ally Mersman
and Macy Sohre of Maple River 6-0, 6-1. In the semifinals they defeated Lauren
Rutten and Ronnie Noska of Staples-Motley 6-2, 6-0.
The sisters also played vital roles in singles competition earlier in the week as second-seeded Blake won the Class A team title, defeating Providence Academy, Pine City and top-seeded Rochester Lourdes.
“I think what makes a good doubles
team is having a complementing style of play, and they do,” said Blake coach Mike
Ach. “Nana is the finisher in the group and Fatemeh to me is more of a set-up
player. Fatemeh was phenomenal today, that's the best I've seen her play. But they
work so well together, they complement each other.
“You want a team that melds, to have
a player who sets the other one up, with more of a steady player and more of an
aggressive player. But you have to have the right players or it doesn’t seem to
turn out quite so well.”
As steady as the Vang sisters were
on the court, there was some tension behind the scenes when Nana fell ill
between Friday morning’s semifinals and the afternoon title match.
“I got sick,” she said. “I got a
headache and I started throwing up. I don't know if it was nerves but it was
freaky, for sure.”
Fatemah said, “When she got sick I
was like, ‘Oh my god, it's over.’ ”
Nothing was over, however, until the
Vangs said it was over (paraphrasing a line from a famous 1970s movie).
“It was really scary,” Nana said. “But
I'm glad that when we got on the court it all kind of melted away.”
--MSHSL senior content creator John Millea has been the leading
voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter
@MSHSLjohn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get
podcasts. Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
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