In singles, Green Hope junior Melissa Kandinata defeated teammate and last year’s champion sophomore Helen Wang in straight sets, 6-0, 6-1.

Apex’s duo of Shelby Bickel and Nikki Bowser, both juniors, repeated their claim as conference champions in doubles, winning 6-4, 6-3.

In each championship, players were facing familiar faces. For Kandinata, it was her best friend and teammate. For Bickel and Bowser, they were facing the same opponents – Green Hope’s Kelly Stokes and Brianna Steele – that they faced in last year’s championship.

Kandinanta, in her first year with Green Hope after moving into the area from Florida, was excited to win a conference title in her first year with the Falcons.

“I thought I played well,” Kandinata said. “My backhand was pretty good.”

But having to go up against a good friend was less than thrilling to Kandinata.

“It was weird … It’s harder,” Kandinata said. “You’re not as intense.”

Kandinata and Wang, along with Athens’ Cammie DelForge and Lee County’s Jan Ansley and Elizabeth Gay, all qualified for the individual state playoffs in singles competition.

Apex’s repeating champs, Bickel and Bowser, said they’ve been playing tennis with one another since they were 9, and it showed on Friday.

The two said their chemistry has been the key to winning two Tri-Nine titles – and they have another year left to win a possible third.

It was the second year the pair had defeated Green Hope’s duo of Stokes and Steele for the championship, with last year’s going three sets, but Bowser said it was actually harder this go-round.

“Last year we had gotten the opportunity to play them twice in the season already, and this year we were going into it blind,” Bowser said. “We didn’t know how they were going to play or their style.”

All players said it was unusual having to wait so long between one round to the other. Tournament officials, aware of the rainy forecast, made sure to get in as many rounds as possible on Tuesday.

“It was definitely tough having to play the first three matches one day and having to wait four days for finals,” Bickel said. “But it also helped us to [rest] because we were both really tired after the first night, obviously.”

Dual-team playoffs begin Green Hope went undefeated in dual-team meets in the Tri-Nine Conference, which gives the Falcons a home match against Wakefield on Tuesday in the NCHSAA dual-team playoffs.

Panther Creek finished second by defeating all others except for Green Hope. It was the first time in school history the program had defeated Apex, Athens Drive or earned a playoff berth.

It's undetermined as to whom the Catamounts will face in the first round, and the same goes for whether Apex or Athens Drive will earn a wild-card berth in the state playoffs.

The NCHSAA has yet to release the brackets for this year's tournament.