The third time was the charm for the Allie Fort and Ella Lester.
The Hopkinsville doubles team advanced to the third round of the KHSAA State Tennis Championships presented by UK HealthCare Tuesday in Nicholasville.
The duo won matches as eighth-graders and freshmen before breaking through this week.
Seeded in the top 16 in the state coming into this week, Fort and Lester slugged out a three-set win over South Warren’s Francesca Poole and Morgan Roberston.
Fort and Lester took the first set 6-3. Up 3-2, they broke server twice with Fort serving for the set win.
Poole and Robertson took the second set 6-3 as they were able to break out to a 5-1 lead.
The third set tie-breaker was tied at 4-4 and 5-5. Hoptown led 7-6 and scored the final three points to claim the 10-6 win.
There was no such drama in their second-round match when they met Henderson County’s Merrick Conkright and Cameron Chandler for a fifth time this season. Fort and Lester won 6-1, 6-0 in becoming the first Hopkinsville girls’ doubles team to advance to the round of 16 since Mallory and Mackenzie Perkins in 2009.
It gets much tougher on Wednesday when the Hopkinsville pair meets the tournament’s top-seeded team of Haley Klein and Laurel Slechter of Oldham County.
Fort and Lester are the first Hoptown doubles team in the past 25 years to win matches in three straight years. They have been eliminated by the eventual state champion each of the past two seasons.
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Hooray