DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9710310301

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 22   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JAY LIDINGTON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   60 lines

TEAMWORK EARNS TITLE THIRD TIME IN A ROW FOR NORFOLK COLLEGIATE

You might expect teen-aged girls to wear the same jewelry, fingernail polish and hair ribbons.

But when those girls play tennis for Norfolk Collegiate, such trappings take on a special significance. They have enhanced esprit de corps among the Oaks, which has helped keep Collegiate atop the TCIS.

The Oaks, featuring three Virginia Beach girls on their roster, all but swept through the TCIS tournament last weekend at the Howard D. Mast Tennis Complex in Suffolk, winning five of six singles finals and two of three doubles championships.

Collegiate claimed the TCIS team title with 70 points. Norfolk Academy was second with 54. It was the third year in a row that the Oaks had won or shared the championship.

Only Michelle Grover of Norfolk Academy, who defeated Collegiate's Kimbrough Mauney in singles and the Mauney-Jayme Goldwasser doubles team with partner Jessica Sperling, prevented a Collegiate sweep of the nine championship matches.

The Oaks' Melissa Balaban, Karen Reina, Jayme Goldwasser, Carla Benson and Lindsey Bangel won their singles matches, as did the doubles teams of Balaban/Reina and Bangel/Benson. Benson and Bangel live in Virginia Beach.

Grover was named tournament singles MVP and doubles MVP along with Sperling.

The top six singles players for Collegiate were a study in team unity at the conference tournament. All wore blue and silver ribbons in their hair, blue eye shadow and glitter on their freckled faces. The girls painted their fingernails with a metallic blue nail polish called Peacock Pearl during breakfast Friday morning.

Each player also wore a gold charm necklace given to them by Carol Baker, a senior last year now playing tennis at Vassar College in New York.

``It's just that they're good friends,'' said Collegiate coach Micki Campbell. ``They play as a cohesive team. They get more upset if they lose as a team than if an individual would lose.''

Defeat has been somewhat of an alien concept to the Oaks. As a team, they went unbeaten in the TCIS. Balaban, Reina, Goldwasser, Benson and Bangel and the Balaban/Reina and Bangel/Benson doubles teams also went undefeated against conference competition.

Norfolk Collegiate lost only once overall - to Richmond Collegiate and its two nationally-ranked junior players - and defeated all three of the public school district champions - state semifinalist Cox (Beach), Maury (Eastern) and Great Bridge (Southeastern) - losing a total of three individual matches against those teams.

``We're very consistent,'' said No. 1 singles player Mauney. ``It's not just individuals. We love each other and we want to win for each other.''

The Oaks have come far this season without a single dominant player. Collegiate is strong throughout its lineup, and the most hotly contested matches were in challenge matches to determine seeds within their own team.

``It's been a lot of fun,'' said Campbell, at the end of her sixth year coaching the Oaks. ``I work them hard, but they have a lot of fun.''

Collegiate returns three of its top six players next year. The team's No. 7 player, 10th-grader Sarah Caplan, should help the Oaks next year as they go after their fourth straight title. KEYWORDS: TCIS GIRLS TENNIS

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