Herricks’ Valia won the state singles tennis championship.

The list of remarkable qualities in Angel Walia’s tennis game is long. The elder Herricks has incredible speed and agility. It generates tremendous force on ground strikes from a small frame. Her stamina is hard to match. And then there is willpower.

Walia needed them all, especially the last one, as she took on top-ranked Niskayuna sophomore Olivia Dartawan on Wednesday at the state public school singles championship.

Walia, seeded sixth, got off to a great start and won the first set. But late in the second, Dartawan saved a match point and turned it into huge momentum down the stretch and a three-point lead in the tiebreaker. It was here that Walia stemmed the tide building around her, winning six straight points for a 6-2, 7-6 (4) victory at the USTA National Tennis Center in Queens.

“I thought, ‘I’m not going to play the third set because the third set could go either way,’” Walia said. “She was hungry. I was hungry too. So I just thought I need to get these points right here.”

Walia finished the tournament by dispatching the top three seeds to take the title. She is Herricks’ first singles champion since Liz Jaffee won the crown in 1981. Long Island has produced three of the last five state singles champions.

Entering the last of six seasons of high school tennis, Walia was hoping to win a Nassau County singles title and possibly a state title. That vision faded when she lost in the district semifinals to eventual champion Angelina Bravo of Garden City. That’s why she ended up at No. 6 and had a tough road to the state tournament.

“This is the perfect way to end this,” Walia said. “I was hoping I could win districts, but it didn’t happen. So I just worked hard all week and fixed my mentality. “I reminded myself that this is who I am (and) I can do this.”

And she was on edge when she served for the match in the ninth game of the second set. Walia got to match point, but Dartawan saved him and won the game after three deuces. She won the next game and broke Valia’s serve again for a 6–5 lead. Walia regained the break in the 12th game but looked like she didn’t have much left when she lost four of the first five points in the tiebreaker.

“After she took the 4-1 lead, I thought, ‘I can’t let this go,’” Walia said. “So I just fought for every point, moved my feet as best I could and played as aggressively as I could.”

Before serving her second match point, Walia turned away from the court and hit the Chase Center tarp. Then she won the point and screamed.

“I just pictured myself as a state champion holding the trophy,” she said. “Then I put everything into it.”

Problems with doubles

Great Neck South’s top doubles team of junior Madison Lee and seventh-grader Gabrielle Villegas failed to make it past the island. Horace Greeley’s sixth-ranked team of senior Allison Tsai and junior Michelle Rosenblit broke serve all seven times and won the title match 6-1, 6-1.

Neither Lee nor Villegas held serve as they fell 0-3 in the first set of the doubles final. Although they had a service break in the fourth game, they did not pick up the pace as the service line problems continued. The duo made six double faults in the first set.

“We were too inconsistent and they came out strong and got the advantage early,” Lee said. “We didn’t change our game plan when we were losing big. Maybe if we tried something new things would change.” our level of consistency.”

“We didn’t give ourselves a chance,” Villegas said.

They quickly lost 0–4 in the second set and ended up not winning a single serve in the match.

“I had a bad day,” Lee said. “Sometimes on your pitches people have bad days and good days. I had good days, so it wasn’t fair for me to think it would stay that way. But there’s nothing I can do, I’m just working on my serve.”

Around the island

In the fifth-place doubles match, Alex Krol and Chloe Gross of Roslyn won the marathon over Matilda Buchen and Ava Borruso of Westhampton, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3. Bayport-Blue Point sisters Emilia and Evie Romano finished in eighth place. In singles, Bravo finished sixth and Suffolk singles champion Anya Konopka of Smithtown East placed seventh.