WIESBADEN, Germany – According to pre-tournament seeding, Saturday’s four championship matches at the DODEA European Tennis Championships seemed destined to have a heavy Kaiserslautern Military Community flavor.

But while all four titles could still belong to athletes from Ramstein or Kaiserslautern after the day is done, the word on who should be playing for the titles apparently didn’t get carried over the Alps.

The Vicenza girls doubles team of Annika Svenson and Addie Wilson and Sigonella’s Charlize Caro in singles were the only non-KMC players predicted to make the finals. They played their parts and were joined by Vicenza’s Michael Gillett in boys singles and Marymount’s Giovanni La Piana and Riccardo Averni in boys doubles after upset victories in either pool play or semifinal action Friday.

So it’ll be six KMC players against six players based in Italy in four title matches Saturday.

Boys singles

The semifinals bracket was set early for the boys with the top four seeds all securing at least three wins apiece.

Fourth seed Gillett closed out pool play with a tough 8-0 loss to three-time European boys singles champion Tristan Chandler of Ramstein, but the sophomore didn’t let that get him down as he advanced in his first DODEA championship.

In the semifinals, Gillett battled against Kaiserslautern’s Jace Martin in what was the match of the day. The grueling back-and-forth contest clocked in at just shy of three hours before Gillett emerged with a 5-7, 6-2 7-6 (8-6) victory.

“This match was so long and hot playing inside the bubble,” Gillett said, adding that it was about an hour longer than any match he’s played before.

Ahead 6-1 in the third-set tie breaker, Gillett felt the victory start to slip away.

“I started losing points like crazy,” he said. “I was getting nervous, but I knew with all the support of my teammates, I would win the game.”

Gillett did just that and gets another crack at Chandler, who breezed into the finals with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Marymount’s Giorgio deli Falconi. Chandler has only lost a single game the entire tournament.

Girls singles

Caro is ready to claim her first European title. But she’ll have to defeat the tournament’s top seed – Kaiserslautern’s Abby Hover – to do so.

In her fourth year and fourth championship tournament, Caro has inched higher with each appearance after finishing fourth overall in her freshman year.

“I’ll play my heart out tomorrow – I have to literally leave it all on the court and hope for the best,” Caro said after her 6-1, 6-3 semifinal win over Naples’ Liliana Stutzman.

After finishing second behind Raider Stella Schmitz last year, Caro hopes for better results against another Raider on Saturday. “K-town wins every year. I’ve got to break the cycle.”

Her work will be cut out for her against Hover, who has only dropped four games across five matches so far. Two of those games were won by Stuttgart’s Bella Farias in a 6-2, 6-0 semifinal victory for Hover. She’ll play in her first singles final after winning the doubles championship the last two years with Alisa Dietzel.

Boys doubles

Of the four brackets, this is the one that went the most against seeding. And it almost was even more dramatic.

Three teams finished tied for second in Pool B with 2-2 records, including the No. 5 and No. 7 teams and No. 9 seed Naples. Wildcat brothers Erion and Yoel Lord not only upset the No. 2 seed (Ramstein’s Elliot Radosevich and Bernie Novak), but they beat Vicenza’s Andrew Reed and Jacob McGovern (the fifth seeds) as well.

McGovern and Reed advanced after a series of tiebreakers were applied. The Cougars’ good fortune ended there, though, at the hands of fourth-seeded Marymount, 6-1, 6-1. The Royals duo of La Piana and Averni went unbeaten in Pool A, knocking off top-seeded Kaiserslautern duo Bryan Oh and Leo DiPaola along the way.

La Piana and Averni are technically underdogs but could actually be the favorites today against Radosevich and Novak, who downed Oh and DiPaola in the semifinals 2-6, 7-5, 6-3.

The Marymount duo, both juniors, have competed in singles for years but paired up in doubles for the tournament.

“When we first started playing (our chemistry) wasn’t that great, because we weren’t very coordinated on the court,” La Piana said after their semifinals win. “Thanks to our coach (Marco Mascioli), we were able to kind of find our balance.”

Averni said he was looking forward to playing against Ramstein because they haven’t had a chance to play each other.

Girls doubles

Dietzel, pairing with Emma Bailey with Hover in the singles bracket, advanced to her fourth straight doubles final. But it wasn’t easy.

Isabel Williams and Isabella Suber of Stuttgart were seeded fifth, but they made it to the semifinals and gave the top-rated Kaiserslautern duo a fight before falling 6-1, 5-7, 6-3.

After Vicenza’s Svenson and Wilson teamed up to top Wiesbaden’s Sophie Rainey and Isabella Na 6-4, 6-1 in the other semifinal, the finals are set with three of the four participants playing for the title for the second straight year. Hover and Dietzel defeated Svenson and Wilson a year ago.

The Vicenza-Wiesbaden match was a family affair as Wilson stood across the net from her cousin Rainey.

Wilson said the family feud wasn’t anything new, having played against her Rainey cousins many times in the past, but that the ‘’tension” is always there. Svenson joked that in years past the doubles matches would be “cousin, cousin, cousin, and then (me) stranger”.

Svenson and Wilson are far from strangers though, as the duo said they have grown together as players and teammates over the last three years.

“We just know each other very well, and we know how our playing style is. There’s just like some type of trust there when playing,” Svenson said.

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