Fairfield brings home hardware

WATERLOO — The Trojan tennis trio representing Fairfield at the Class 1A girls state tennis tournament took back some medals when they took the road home on Thursday.

Fairfield’s top doubles team of seniors Yana Gaskell and Nellie Higdon finished second place at the state meet. Junior Tess Paton took third on the singles courts.

Gaskell and Higdon began their day with a match against Ella Tallett and Avery Link of Cedar Rapids Xavier. The Trojans won 6-4, 6-1.

“ That match was really crucial,” said Gaskell, who won the state singles tournament in 2019. “We were down in the second set, and we really battled to come back. I'm really happy we were able to pull through.”

The win took under an hour, as the top-seeded Trojan duo moved forward to the state championship match.

“It was kind of nervy because it was the match to get to the finals,” Higdon said. “Once we got that first set under our belts, we were able to relax a little bit.“

Gaskell and Higdon had trouble with the second Xavier team they played on Thursday. After advancing out of the other side of the bracket, the Saints’ top doubles team of Ally Burger and Courtney Carstensen beat the Trojans 6-2, 6-2.

Burger and Carstensen were the first team to upend the duo of Gaskell and Higdon, who just started playing doubles together again after Gaskell returned from a yearlong injury at the beginning of the postseason.

“I've seen them playing together since they were freshmen,” Gaskell said. “The fact that we started playing again three weeks ago means a lot.”

Higdon and Gaskell had talked about doing doubles together in the postseason if Gaskell could get back in time, but the dream was finally realized with just a month of play left.

“It feels pretty good,” Higdon said. “It's further than I ever gotten, and I wouldn't have gotten here without Yana.”

Paton, the No. 3 seed in the singles bracket, had a tough first round match against second-seeded Miyako Coffey of Xavier. Coffey knocked Paton out 6-0, 6-2.

Paton previously played Coffey in state doubles when she made it as a freshman.

“She was my first round match, and we got blown out,” Paton said. “I was really motivated by her, and she has kind of been my inspiration. Playing her was really exciting, because I can kind of see how I've grown the last two years.”

Paton came back and ended the day with a dominant win in the third-place game. She marched past Le Yuan Sun of Shenandoah 6-0, 6-2.

“I was very loose, which is uncommon,” Paton said. “I was a little less stressed out than before, and I just wanted to play my best tennis.”

It wasn’t the last dance for the Fairfield tennis team. That will come on Saturday when the Trojans compete in the state team tournament. They will play against Columbus Catholic, while Xavier and Spirit Lake face off in the opposite semifinal.

The Trojans will have an early start Saturday when the team tournament kicks off in Ankeny. Fairfield will begin play at 8:30 a.m.