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Sports

New Trier Badminton: Trevians Rally, Take Conference Title

After falling behind Glenbrook South after Friday's doubles matches, New Trier defended its CSL conference championship.

As the two-time defending conference winners and last year’s state champion, New Trier hasn’t had to face a lot of adversity this season. But when the Trevians found themselves trailing Glenbrook South by a point after Friday’s doubles matches, they didn’t panic.

Buoyed by seven first-place finishes and another three runner-ups, New Trier rallied to win its sixth CSL championship in the last nine seasons.

“We didn’t feel like we were down too much because it was only one point and with 12 singles there were a lot of points out there,” New Trier coach Deborah Ofcky. “We felt like we were in pretty good shape and we set out today to just play every point, every match and do the best we could and leave it on the court.”

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No. 1 singles player Mari Georgiadis led the way for New Trier and cruised to a championship victory over Evanston’s Lauren Teske in the finals. The New Trier senior captured the first game 21-9 and then used a 10-point run midway through the second game to clinch the match, 21-6.

“It was really exciting,” Georgiadis said. “It was my last conference tournament so I was looking forward to hopefully playing well and I did it seems like.”

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New Trier won the title despite an injury to Dora Saclarides, who separated her shoulder at the ABCD tournament in Hinsdale. Ofcky shifted the doubles lineup on Friday and Lejia Duan took Saclarides’ spot at No. 3 singles. Although Duan was the only Trevian not to finish in the top 3, Ofcky was thrilled with her 2-2 record in a position higher than usual.

“All of them did an excellent job of managing themselves, no matter what opponent came up,” Ofcky said. “Even in [three-game matches], sometimes they were down and they fought really hard and played over their heads.”

Sophomore Audrey Mang won the No. 2 singles championship for New Trier after combining with Georgiadis to win No. 3 doubles on Friday. Jessica Kurowski was New Trier’s third two-title winner for the weekend, taking No. 11 singles and winning the No. 4 doubles with Laura Park.

The other Trevians to take home singles championships were Claire Hindsley (No. 4), Jill Burnstein (No. 6), Nikki Vanderpal (No. 8) and Olivia Cessine (No. 10)

New Trier will start IHSA sectionals next weekend. Rankings and assignments will be released on Tuesday.

Ofcky hopes Saclarides will be ready to compete by next weekend, but will be preparing two different lineups just in case.

“We’re just hoping that we take one match at a time and hopefully we’ll qualify our whole team next week to move on to the state tournament,” Ofcky said. “After that everything is icing on the cake. Getting there is the struggle.” 

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