Excerpt from Sunday's Spectrum 3 May 2015
SC wins season title, Micah Alba wins tourney singles
Desert Hills and Snow Canyon met up in four of the five
finals at the Region 9 tennis meet Saturday morning at Tonaquint, but it was
Dixie's Micah Alba who stole the show. Alba,
the only finalist who wasn't a Thunder or a Warrior, won a thrilling match over
Desert Hills' Gabe Anderson in the first singles championship, 7-6 (3), 4-6,
7-5. The region tournament was solely
for individual region championships and state seeding; no team champion was
announced. Rather, Snow Canyon won the team region championship based on
regular season results.
While Desert Hills and Snow Canyon split 2-2 in their finals
matchups, only Desert Hills had finalists in every competition. Alba, the owner of a serve that often whizzes
past opponents and has so much pace that it got stuck in the net several times,
broke serve at 4-4 in the third set and needed to just hold serve to prevail. But Anderson played tenaciously and won the
game, only for Alba to turn around and break serve again. Once again, though, Alba's potential
match-winning service turn went poorly, and he found himself down 40-love. But Alba battled back to tie the
game--despite his shoe on one of the points.
On matchpoint, Alba tucked one of his fastball serves into
the corner of the service court. Anderson moved quickly to return it; then Alba
smashed a shot to the middle of the court. Anderson was forced to scramble and
his return shot fell out of bounds, giving Alba the match. "We spend a lot of time at Bloomington
Country Club working on pressure points," Alba said of closing out the
match. "It wasn't anything I hadn't experienced before." Alba was quick to compliment Anderson on his
play. "He's an all-around good player," Alba said. "He knows how
to focus on good points, which is why he was able to come back on me (at the
end of the third set)." It was Alba's third time winning region but his first time
prevailing in first singles and taking the title of region's best player.
Here's Micah as a Devil Pup:
