EDEN PRAIRIE 5, KENNEDY 2

#4 Eden Prairie beat #10 Kennedy for the second time this year in the battle of the Eagles, but it was touch and go. In the first meeting it was 6-1 EP.  Kennedy led 4-3 after the first set with a whiff of an upset brewing. EP led 3-2 with the two odd doubles still out. The first doubles came in first with a 21-15 third set win for the new pair of Sydney Ruesink & Tracey Yang thus clinching the win for EP. The third doubles match ended in an extra point win for Cambria Lang & Halle Peterson. Both teams split at singles with EP taking the middle two in addition to taking all the doubles.

A side note—I had planned to go to Math & Science after this match to see the TCAC championship game. The Kennedy game started at 3:30; the M&S match at 4:30, but I didn’t get out of Kennedy until 4:20. With a 30 minute transit time, that would put me there at 4:50 missing 20 minutes of action.

SINGLES
1. Chusang Nhasang, K def Ashley Nelson 21-10, 21-13
2. Avery Schu, EP def Angela Taing 21-15, 21-14
3. Sanjana Seethamraju, EP def Vichcheka Chy 21-12, 21-8
4. Yan-Mei Yuan, K def Katie Terrance 22-20, 21-15

DOUBLES
1. Sydney Ruesink/Tracey Yang, EP def Yang-Ling Yuan/Anh Nguyen 16-21, 21-7, 21-15
2. Nadia Sharawi/Amanda Polanski, EP def Kim Nguyen/Tran Nguyen 21-16, 21-19
3. Cambria Lang/Halle Peterson, EP def Guadalupe Fernandez/Annabelle Benitz 18-21, 21-15, 24-22

BY THE NUMBERS
SINGLES
Matches: split 2-2 .500
Games: split 4-4 .500
points: Eden Prairie 142-134 .514
decided by 10+: split 1-1 .500
decided by 3-: Kennedy 1-0 1.000
margin: Eden Prairie 1.000
DOUBLES
Matches: Eden Prairie 3-0 1.000
Games: Eden Prairie 6-2 .750
points: Eden Prairie 163-136 .545
decided by 10+: Eden Prairie 1-0 1.000
decided by 3-: Eden Prairie 2-1 .667
margin: Eden Prairie 3.375

FIRST SINGLES

chusang NHASANG 2, Ashley NELSON 0
(21-10, 21-13)

#2 Chusang Nhasang of Kennedy and #4 Ashley Nelson of Kennedy faced off in a power battle. Rallies lasted longer, both players scrambled for points. Neither player had an abundance of winners; Nhasang won that category 17-15. But Nhasang had a better defensive game as indicated by the side out and service point categories. Nelson was able to generate three runs, but never a huge margin. Six rallies today lasted 10 strokes or longer. Nhasang was able to get to birds making several shoelace saves to keep the rally going; the Kennedy senior was also able to blunt the Nelson’s power game with several blocks (including one for a point) holding her to five smashes for the day. The biggest differential came on points off errors. There Nhasang had a +16 advantage.

Nhasang had a 5-1 lead in the first set with four points coming on errors. But these weren’t your garden variety errors; these were errors that came on set up birds. (which could lead to a new stat category, but not today). Nhasang would paint Nelson back into the left corner and force her to use the back hand. That gave Nhasang freedom to spread the floor. The net game belonged to Nhasang 11-4 on winners. It was 9-8 in the second set for Nhasang when she rattled off nine straight points to take a comfortable 18-8 lead. Eight of those points came via errors—-three came off back hand hits; three were wide; four found the net.

One way to measure the impact of the match was by time. This lasted 14 minutes, which is about four minutes longer than most of the matches Nhasang has faced lately (10 vs Burnsville; 11 vs Edina, 12 vs Hmong Academy). Again you can measure it with the strokes per point. Most of the matches tend to be three or less.

This was a good tune up for next week’s state individual. Players can expect even longer matches to come.

Category	NHASANG	NELSON
Side out	9/16-.563	3/15-.200
3+ Runs	6	3
Longest point string	9	3
Service points	28	10
Overall points	41	23
Points after 11	20	11
Points after own errors	4/8—.500	8/24-.333
Strokes	181	116
Strokes per point	4.310	5.043
5+ rallies	13	9
2- rallies	12	6
WINNERS	17	15
Aces	0	1
Blocks	1	0
Clears	2	3
Drives	1	2
Drops	5	1
Soft drives	4	3
Smashes	3	5
ERRORS	8	24
Deep	1	4
Net	5	12
Wide	2	7
Serve	0	1
WINNER LOCATION
Back	1	2
Middle	5	9
Front	11	4
Left	7	6
Right	10	9
W:E Ratio	2.125	0.625
Margin	9.000
Set Point %	2/4-.500
Time	14:05.49