Mesquite's Natalie Weber caps perfect season with badminton state championship
Gilbert Mesquite’s Natalie Weber made it look easy in six consecutive wins to capture the first-ever Arizona Interscholastic Association girls badminton state championship for Mesquite on Saturday.
Weber, seeded first in the Division II singles bracket, capped off her perfect 13-0 regular season with a championship win over second-seeded Phoenix Sunnyslope's Aimee Clifford. Weber won, 11-2 and 11-6, in the best-of-three series.
In the second game, Clifford jumped out to a 6-3 lead. But Weber scored eight consecutive points to win.
“Whenever I’m down in a match, I just say, ‘I’m not losing. I’m never going to lose,’ ” Weber said.
“All of the hard work we put in this entire year has just paid off. I wouldn’t be able to do it without my team and my coaches and all of the support I’ve had. It’s just amazing.”
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Division I singles
Second-seeded Glendale Mountain Ridge's MacKenzie Whitten took down No. 1 Mesa Skyline's Denise Nieves in three sets, 11-5, 5-11 and 11-8.
“It was really, really hard. I had three really tough matches, but I had so much fun doing it,” Whitten said.
Whitten easily defeated Nieves 11-5 in the first set in which she jumped out to an early 7-1 lead.
Nieves commanded the tempo in the second set nearly the entire way. She began 5-0 and kept her rhythm to win a force and third set.
The final set was tight, and Whitten won in a nail-biter.
Whitten said she plans to join a badminton club in college.
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Division I doubles
Sixth-seeded Phoenix Xavier double partners Tatum Clarke and Annie Kamps defeated fifth-seeded Gilbert Perry's Dominique Garcia and Tory Albin for the Division I doubles championship, 15-9 and 15-10.
Garcia and Albin, down 8-1, made a series of runs to cut their deficit to two points, but Clarke and Kamps held on for the win.
“Stressful. It was very stressful,” Clarke said.
The second game was a back-and-forth battle that included four lead changes. However, Clarke and Kamps showed power and confidence to win the title.
“We are very proud, we came back from being underdogs,” Kamps said. “It feels good to win.”
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Division II doubles
No. 1-seeded Gilbert Campo Verde's Kelsey Decker and Isabel Holloway defeated third-seeded Gilbert Mesquite's Justine Gardner and Rebecca Farias, 17-15 and 15-2, for the Division II doubles final.
The first game, although mostly controlled by Campo Verde, saw flashes of resiliency from Mesquite. Gardner and Farias forced extra play when they tied the set at 14.
Ultimately, Decker and Holloway earned three extra points to Mesquite’s one for the win.
In the second game, Decker and Holloway did not let it get nearly as close, allowing only two points.
“We worked really, really hard for this. We were just trusting each other.," Holloway said. "Every single point we were like, ‘I trust you. I believe in you. We can do this.’ And we were going to work for every single point.”
