Doubles teammates Whitney Richards and Sarah Osborn won three straight matches in Monday's Bay Valley Athletic League tournament to advance to the semifinals on day two.
Against Carondelet's No. 1 doubles pair of Anelyse Villa and Eryn Parker, Richards and Osborn lost the first set but battled back to claim the next two sets and the match.
"We just got our game on," Richards said. "We knew we could do it."
Richards and Osborn claimed the 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory to advance to the finals against Carondelet's No. 2 pair, Suzanne Corrado and Allison Romolino.
One of the keys to the pair's success was their use of hand signals to let each other know where they were going on the court after each shot.
"They help a lot but (in the semifinals) we had to switch them up because they found out what we were doing," Richards said. "We just had to keep changing it."
The final match proved too tough for the Falcon pair, which fell 6-1, 6-0. Nonetheless, Freedom managed to earn a bid to NCS, having made it that far.
"Freedom's knocked on the door many times but until now we weren't able to get into NCS," said head coach Steve Amaro. "Carondelet has a lot of psychological advantage over other teams, but Whitney and Sarah played great. That was the best they played all year and I'm very proud of them."
The Falcon duo will head to NCS Nov. 14 and 15 at James Logan High School to face some of the best players in the section.
"This is my last year and I get to go to NCS," said Richards, a senior. "I'm so excited."
Until NCS, Richards and Osborn will be working on every aspect of their game in preparation.
"We'll probably have some of the boys come out to help them practice," Amaro said. "At NCS everyone has to play and so my goal is we want to play this Carondelet team again at NCS and we'll see if we can take them out there."
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