By Tim Mastro

MIDDLETOWN — Ava Vu was concentrated on staying in the right frame of mind as she competed for a state tennis title.

Don’t get too high, don’t get too low was her focus. She remembered a match a few weeks ago at the Henlopen Conference tournament where a few things didn’t go her way which snowballed into her dropping a set.

“Mentally I caved, I wasn’t going to do that again,” Vu said. “I said that wasn’t going to happen. I was going to be calm and be confident.”

The Caesar Rodney High freshman rode that mindset to a winner’s medal.
Vu captured the No. 3 girls’ singles championship with a 6-2, 6-1 victory over Maggie Roberts of Archmere Wednesday at the DIAA tennis championships, hosted by St. Andrew’s School.

Vu was the lone downstate individual champion.

“She’s really grown up in the last week or so and played her best tennis,” said CR coach Dan Candeloro. “She works hard in practice, works hard off the court and works hard in school. It’s going to be fun to see her grow over the next three years.”

Andy Zhu of Archmere was the boys’ No. 1 singles winner while Aubrey Nisbet of Wilmington Friends won girls’ No. 1 singles. Tower Hill was crowned the boys’ team champion and the Wilmington Friends girls’ squad took home the first state title in program history.

Vu was Caesar Rodney’s first individual state champion in the last four seasons, since Katherine Tamesis also won the No. 3 singles title in 2018.
Vu said she was not nervous playing such a big match in her first year of high school.

“When I get anxious I freeze up and I don’t play my best,” she said. “So I just try to go out there and play. I had to stay focused.”

The Caesar Rodney girls’ team was also led by a runner-up performance from Allyson Lebendig and Yatra Patel in the No. 2 doubles bracket. The Riders do not have a single senior on the roster. Candeloro noted they’re all coming back next year.

“It’s a great bunch of girls,” he said. “I’m proud of them all.”

Janelle Gyambibi and Malini Lodhavia from Dover High also earned a runner-up finish in the tournament. They were seeded fifth in the No. 1 singles bracket but made it to the finals before finishing in second.

The top downstate player in the boys’ tournament was Caesar Rodney’s Darin Jawahar who was second in No. 1 singles.

Other state champions includes Ben Chen of Wilmington Charter at No. 2 boys’ singles, Constantine Moutsatsos of Tower Hill at No. 3 boys’ singles, Matthew Heinle and Demetrios Moutsatsos of Tower Hill at No. 1 boys’ singles, Jack Allen and Samuel DeSantis of Tower Hill at No. 2 boys’ doubles, Alexis Montana of Wilmington Friends at No. 2 girls’ singles, Evelyn Parsonage and Caroline Peach of Ursuline at No. 1 girls’ doubles and Zoe Clowney and Georgia Davis of St. Andrew’s at girls’ No. 2 doubles.

Staff writer Tim Mastro can be reached at tmastro@iniusa.org.
Follow @TimMastroDSN on Twitter.