Baseball: Fremd rolls to title of own sectional

Updated: May 3, 2012 10:40PM

Few badminton teams have talent comparable to Fremd at No. 2 singles and No. 2 doubles.

If there was any doubt about the quality at the top of the Vikings lineup before Thursday’s Fremd Sectional, they erased that with an emphatic victory. Fremd swept the sectional’s top two spots in both singles and doubles.

Angela Wu won the singles title 21-11, 21-19 over Annie Huang. Kelly Owens and Ji Young Seo beat Mayu Sugikawa and Rina Seo 21-12, 21-19 in the doubles final.

“It helps a lot,” Wu said of the benefits that come with practicing against Huang every day. “I don’t know if other teams have a second singles as good as Annie. By us having each other, we can make each other improve much faster.”

The Vikings (18 points) were the clear class of Thursday’s sectional, which was held in Palatine. Wu and Huang cruised to the final with two dominating performances apiece. The Vikings’ doubles teams also had little trouble in their quarterfinal and semifinal matches.

Fremd’s dominance left the other four teams in the sectional to battle for second place and the remaining four state berths. Hersey doubles team Lexey Cole and Steffi Anthony qualified for state, as did the Huskies’ Jen Hall. Hersey finished fourth in singles and doubles, but scored 14 points in the sectional to finish second.

Glenbrook South, behind third-place finishes by Olivia Nelson and doubles team Vicki Powers and Mackenzie O’Brien, finished third in the sectional with 10 points.

Hoffman Estates was fourth overall with three points, and Glenbrook North finished fifth with two points.

After she and Powers won their fourth and final match of the sectional to finish third, O’Brien couldn’t hide her elation.

Qualifying for state for the first time is “the best feeling in the whole entire world, basically,” O’Brien said.

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