Pacific Palisades resident Sophie Bendetti won eight of her 10 matches, including all five of her doubles matches, at the 12s Pacific Zonal Team Championships July 29-August 2 in Tucson, Arizona. From there, the sixth-grader went straight from Arizona to the Rio Del Oro Racquet Club in Sacramento for the Girls’ 12s West Coast Championships, where she reached the finals with partner Marianna Alevra of Santa Barbara. The pair was not seeded in the 14-team field, yet advanced all the way to the finals, where they lost to top-seeded Dana Possokhova and Katya Tabachnik of San Francisco, 8-4. In the first round, Bendetti and Alevra blanked Paula Catanyag of Sacramento and Neha Gupta of Elk Grove, 8-0. Then, in the quarterfinals, the duo upset second-seeded Denise Arendain of Roseville and Eirene Granville of Fair Oaks, 8-3. In the semifinals, Bendetti and Alevra beat Rupa Ganesh of San Jose and Lauren Wolfe of Greenbrae, 8-2. The win avenged Bendetti’s 7-5, 7-6 loss to Ganesh in the first round of singles. In April, Bendetti upset top-seeded Riley Gerdau of Newport Beach, 7-6, 6-4 to win the Girls’ 12s title at the Woodbridge Tennis Club Spring Open in Irvine.
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