Anastasia Goncharova put the Evanston girls tennis program back on the state map in her first season as a high school player. But the junior standout couldn’t quite climb to the top of the mountain.
Goncharova achieved the highest state singles finish in school history but fell one point short of a state championship Saturday at the Class 2A Illinois High School Association state finals at Buffalo Grove High School.
Goncharova suffered a gut-wrenching 7-6 (5), 3-6, 7-6 (6) defeat to Lyons Township sophomore Lahari Yelamanchili in a three-hour marathon match that featured dramatic comebacks by both players. Yelamanchili scored the last four points of the tiebreaker to snatch the title away from Goncharova, who led 6-4 (you only need 7 points to win a typical tiebreaker) but couldn’t score again.
The runnerup finish by the splendid southpaw matched the state second place effort by the Evanston doubles team of Sandy Dean and Julie Dowdall back in 1975.
“I came back from down 4-0 in that tiebreaker, and it was an incredible comeback. That’s the really upsetting thing, because I was this close and I was not able to finish it off,” Goncharova said after wiping away her tears.
“I’m still very proud of the way I played today. I was running and grinding and just trying to finish her off. She’s such a tough opponent and she forced me to play a lot of long points today. I knew every point would count and I wasn’t scared to hit shots even at match point. I just got a little unlucky there at the end, when the wind blew the ball out on one point and the ball bounced off the net on another.”
“That was the best two days of tennis I’ve ever seen Anastasia play,” praised ETHS coach Joyce Anderson. “She really played her heart out, and I think finishing in 2nd place is just amazing. That’s better than she was supposed to finish (Goncharova was seeded in the 3-4 slot prior to the tournament) and that’s something this school has not seen — ever. I hope she’s really proud of her performance.
“Playing against that Lyons girl was like playing against a chameleon, because she was constantly changing things up. She was very creative, but so was Anastasia. You can’t just sit on the baseline and push the ball back against a player like that. You have to create things. Anastasia came to the net so well and put away shots, and she was really so effective at the net. We haven’t seen that from her all season. She played to win in such an amazing way.”
Goncharova displayed her character right from the start of the three-set test. She was down a triple set point in the first set, but rallied to tie things at 6-all before Yelamanchili prevailed by a 7-5 margin in the tiebreaker.
The ETHS junior dominated the second set, winning 5 of the first 6 games, to set up a winner-take-all third set. Again she showed her mettle after trailing 3-1 — then 4-2 — then 5-4 after Yelamanchili smacked a forehand winner.
Goncharova refused to fold under that type of pressure. She came to the net for a winner that moved the score to deuce, then won the next two points to pull even at 5-5. She built more momentum for a 6-5 edge, only to watch Yelamanchili fight back when the Evanston player’s shot off the tape on the net fell out of bounds for the decisive point.
Goncharova caught a bad break early in the tiebreaker when her shot went just past the baseline, and her subsequent whack at the ball cost her a penalty point. Still, she wiped out a 4-0 deficit by scoring six straight points.
Unfortunately, she never scored again.
“That’s one of the toughest losses I’ve ever had,” Goncharova admitted. “I knew she wouldn’t give up. I just wasn’t able to execute on those match points.”
Goncharova finished the season with a 21-4 overall record, tying the school single season record for victories set by Brigit Larson in both 2005 and 2006. Her semifinal triumph by a 6-4, 6-3 margin over Palatine’s Asuke Kawai found the Evanston junior raising her game to another level for the second day in a row.
Kawai had handed Goncharova a regular season loss back in September, but Saturday the matchup belonged to the southpaw slasher.
“Things got a little tight in the second set, just like when we played earlier,” she said. “Last time I had match point up 5-2 and lost to her. Today it was the same situation (at 5-1) when she started rallying, but this time I didn’t panic and I stuck with my shots. I just went for it and I didn’t let her dictate the points. That’s the way you have to play to have success against her.”
Goncharova’s 5 wins in 6 matches lifted Evanston to a tie for 8th place in the team standings with Glenbrook North, both with 12 points. Hinsdale Central captured the team crown with 29 points.
Difficult as it was for Goncharova to absorb the final defeat, her performance this season capped a remarkable journey that began 16 years ago in a hospital in Moscow. That’s when the roots of her future tennis success were planted in the mind of her mother Svetlana.
The family story goes that Svetlana, while in labor awaiting the birth of her daughter, couldn’t find anything on television in the hospital until she dialed up a tennis channel.
“My Mom didn’t really like sports and didn’t really follow sports, but she thought it was pretty amazing when she watched it on TV,” Anastasia said. “She didn’t know if she was going to have a boy or a girl, but she thought it would be great if one day her son or daughter would be a tennis player.
“I tried dance, and I tried gymnastics and I tried soccer when I was younger, but I didn’t really have the skills. Then when I was 7 a coach told me I was old enough to try tennis, and once I picked up a racquet I just fell in love with the sport.”
The family’s move to Evanston when Anastasia was 10 years old was also motivated by an attempt to further her dream of tennis success. Her decision to play high school tennis as a junior is part of an effort to land a college scholarship.
“We have some family that lives here and we knew there’d be awesome opportunities for me here,” Goncharova pointed out. “The move my family made had a lot to do with tennis, because in Russia to get anywhere you have to have wealthy parents. Now that I’m here, I’m definitely on a path to play in college.”
Dennis Mahoney is sports information director for ETHS.
Congratulations!
Awesome performance. Congratulations!