For the third straight season, Northside’s Kate Files will have a chance to play for a state tennis championship.

Files, the talented top-seeded junior for the Lady Bears, made it to the semifinals for the third straight season as she took care of business in Monday’s 6A state quarterfinals, held at Springdale Har-Ber. She won 6-0, 6-1 against Paige Weston of Bentonville West.

“That was her most dominating performance of the year,” Northside coach Martin Hyatt said. “She was mixing up her shots and was also serving by taking away the racket out of her opponent’s hands.”

Files will play her 6A semifinal match beginning at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at Har-Ber against Bentonville’s Ella Coleman. The winner will then advance to the 6A finals, set for around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday against the winner of the other semifinal between Mount St. Mary’s Presley Southerland and Bentonville West’s Cassie Cervantez.

Two years ago, Files took an undefeated record into the 7A state finals before falling. Last season, she reached the 6A semifinals before being defeated, and went on to take third place.

Files will be the only representative from either Northside or Southside to play in Tuesday’s 6A semifinals.

In an upset on Monday, Southside’s top-ranked girls doubles team of Jordan Cormier and Annie Nelligan were defeated in the quarterfinals by Bentonville’s Olivia Roberts and Shreya Kurichety, with the scores 4-6, 7-6, 6-1.

It was the first loss of the season for Cormier and Nelligan, who were coming off their win in the recent 6A-Central conference tournament.

“Annie and Jordan had some nerves early but were able to relax and play well in the first set to win it,” Southside coach Braden Eads said. “They got down early in the second, but fought back to even it up and take it to a second set tiebreaker, which they ultimately fell short on.


“The third set, they got down early as their opponent continued their momentum, but our girls fought back and didn’t give up, but ultimately fell in the third set.”

Another Southside girls doubles team, Ashlyn Roffine and Kate Coleman, were defeated in their opening round match at state, 6-4, 6-1, to Jessica Hood and Ananya Vangoor of Bentonville West.

On the boys side, Southside’s doubles team of Reiter Ahlert and Daniel Kiss dropped a 7-5, 6-0 decision in the first round at state to the team of Sankalp Pandey and Kaushik Sivakumar of Bentonville West.

Northside’s doubles squad of Griffin Huckelbury and Sam Carlisle picked up a win in their opening-round match, 7-5, 6-2 against a team from Fayetteville in a match that Hyatt described as “a fun win.” But Huckelbury and Carlisle were defeated in the 6A quarterfinals, 6-4, 6-2, to Bentonville’s Emiliano Aguirre.


Also for the Grizzlies, Will Thames and Kadin Hyatt competed in boys singles but both were defeated in the first round. Thames dropped a three-set match, 6-0, 2-6, 6-2, to Bentonville’s Vikram Balasekaran, while Hyatt was defeated by Fayetteville’s Jack Mason, 6-0, 6-1.
