The Bay Port girls tennis team has been knocking at the door for this moment the last few years, always falling agonizingly short of reaching the program’s first WIAA state team tennis tournament.
The Pirates finished runner-up to Green Bay Notre Dame at sectionals in 2022, 2024 and 2025, but they left no room for heartbreak this season.
They dominated sectionals with 51 points to punch their ticket to the big stage, finishing well ahead of the 29 points from runner-up Appleton North.
They won five of the seven flights, with No. 1 singles player Alexia Stephens, No. 3 Paige Gillette and No. 4 Mira Erdmann winning sectional titles while No. 2 Sophi Stephens placed third.
The No. 2 doubles team of Evelyn Story and Lilly Jensen and the No. 3 team of Clara Hunt and Allyson Cote both placed first.
Bay Port’s top team of Mira Matuszewski and Rheya Gala was second to De Pere’s Lillianna Graf and Maria Cristescu, who won the D1 state doubles championship.
Bay Port (29-1) earned a No. 4 seed at state and will face No. 5 Eau Claire Memorial (23-3) in a Division 1 quarterfinal at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 at Nielsen Tennis Stadium in Madison.
“This is a very big deal for us,” longtime Bay Port coach Lindsay Matuszewski said. “I think [falling just short in recent years] definitely motivated them. This year, we had a lot of returners. We actually only lost one senior from our starting lineup, so a lot of the kids knew we were right there. Even for the kids that were kind of right on the brink of that 11, 12, 13, that top JV, if they wanted a spot, they knew they had to work hard because we were only going to be losing one spot.
“Our kids put in so much time, I’m sure just like all sports. You have to really be playing year-round, and our girls did that.”
At least by seeding, the Pirates are a favorite to win their first match. That wouldn’t be the case in the semifinals if No. 1 seed Brookfield East advances as expected.
The Spartans have won each of the last two D1 state championships and are making their third straight trip to state and 11th overall.
“Playing Brookfield East is tough, they are a very good team,” Matuszewski said. “They’ve had a solid program for years. I know that coach [Linda Lied] very well. We travel every year. The beginning of the season we go to Ohio for the Cincinnati Open. Our two schools go together.
“It will be a tough match, but if our girls go out and in every single spot we play our game, there is definitely opportunities.”
Bay Port finally celebrates state trip
The Pirates have featured some of the best players in the state in recent years, but with prep tennis forced to compete with the lure of the USTA circuit, sometimes it means a team doesn’t get to have its big standout all four years.
It’s fair to wonder if Bay Port already would have made state sometime in the past decade if Isabelle Lee and her twin sister, Gabrielle, would have played their last three seasons or Karlie Schock would have stuck around for her junior campaign.
Isabelle Lee needed one season in 2016 to establish herself as one of the top girls players in area history after she finished runner-up at the individual state tournament.
Both Isabelle and Gabrielle ended up playing in college for the University of Southern California.
“When the Lee twins didn’t go out for tennis, that was huge,” former Notre Dame coach Steve Burns said after his Tritons made state in 2017. “They are two of the top five in Wisconsin. … That is going to be one of the best teams in Wisconsin.
“It just shows you, one or two players can make a huge difference. After they didn’t go out, we were pretty much in the driver’s seat, on paper at least.”
Schock made a huge splash as a freshman in 2023 when she became the first local D1 girls player to win a state title since the tournament started in 1971 while becoming the first since Racine Case’s Bojana Pozder in 2018 to not drop a single set at state.
Schock returned for her sophomore season with hopes of leading Bay Port to state, but when that goal fell short after the Pirates’ runner-up sectional finish, she opted to not defend her state title at the individual tournament and instead compete in a USTA junior event.
The senior and University of Michigan commit is one of the best players in the nation but did not return to high school tennis her final two seasons.
“Tennis is unique,” Matuszewski said. “All sports have their little nuances, but tennis is unique. There are 10 players on varsity playing in seven spots, and your one singles is worth just as many points as your four singles. So, having a top player definitely helps. That’s one point you can win. When Karlie Schock is there, that’s guaranteed that we are going to win in that spot and it pushes people down.
“But at the end of the day, it’s not like basketball where there is one person that can put up 30 points. It’s still only one point, so for tennis, you really need depth. We have to be strong. That’s what we kind of were this year.”
This doesn’t have to be the only state trip Bay Port makes in the near future.
The numbers, and the momentum, both are on the Pirates’ side.
“I think we are doing pretty well, just kids going out for the team, we usually have 50 to 60 kids total on our roster the last five years or so,” Matuszewski said. “Our numbers are looking good, but the one thing over the last few years that we have really improved is the amount of, not just coming out during tennis season, but really playing November through July.
“Playing in tournaments and doing lessons and kind of improving their game all year long.”
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Bay Port tennis team earns first state tournament trip