O’Neil wraps up high school tennis career with a bang

Lynnfield High tennis player Sarah O’Neil has a knack for making the difficult appear easy.O’Neil ran the table during the regular season, posting a 20-0 record and winning 32 of the 40 sets by 6-0, 6-0 scores along the way. Although the competition got progressively tougher as the Pioneers navigated their way through the state tournament, so did O’Neil, with her crowning achievement coming last weekend, when she won the MIAA state individual title at Clark University in Worcester.”She pretty much played flawless tennis,” Lynnfield High coach Craig Stone said. “Every time she plays, she kicks it up a notch, she takes it to another level.”O’Neil will try to make another big leap when she heads to Cornell, where she plans to play tennis, this fall. O’Neil will bring with her some lofty numbers. In three years of high school tennis (she didn’t play her junior year), she went 46-0 in regular-season play and 59-1 overall. Her lone loss came her sophomore year against Newton South’s Lauren Hollender, but she got her revenge this year, when she beat the three-time defending North champion in the North final.Stone has seen plenty of talented players come through his program, but O’Neil may take the cake.”We’ve had a lot of top players through the years, but nobody who has been able to achieve the accomplishments she has,” Stone said. “Athletically, as well as skill-wise, she’s at another level. She proved it over the weekend. The girls she played against hadn’t lost during the regular season.”Stone said O’Neil’s skills are most impressive.”She possesses a great first serve and an excellent second serve,” he said. “She can drive the ball off both sides, forehand and backhand.”O’Neil only lost one game in the two matches. She defeated Amherst Regional’s Maya Hart, 6-0, 6-1, in the state semifinal and Marlboro sophomore Marina Fileva, 6-0, 6-0, in the state final.”I don’t think the scores show how tough the matches were,” O’Neil said. “Both are really good players. They’re very athletic.”Although O’Neil’s college search ended with Cornell, she also considered several other top-notch schools, including Georgetown, Bowdoin and Middlebury, as well as a couple of southern schools.Although O’Neil has few regrets when it comes to her tennis experience at Lynnfield High, she wishes the team could have won the whole thing. Lynnfield lost to Dover-Sherborn in the state semifinals.Stone said O’Neil’s first comment, after he congratulated her for winning the state individual title, was that she wished it could have been the team winning the title.”The team was very close this year,” O’Neil said. “This year, we all just loved each other. We were laughing every minute on the bus – and we were so successful. It was a perfect season.”