Lou Rabito: Harriton girls go for eighth straight state tennis crown

As a freshman on the Harriton girls' tennis team, Rachel Benstock will play this week in her first PIAA state team tournament. So she doesn't know what it feels like to lose there.

Neither does Marni Blumenthal. The Rams senior has been to three state team tournaments, and emerged a champion three times.

Harriton coach Jack Ladden can't explain that losing feeling, either. Seven years he has been the Harriton coach. Seven years he has guided the Rams to a state team title.

" 'Harriton will make news when we lose' is my statement," Ladden said.

Poetic and prophetic, the statement overlooks two noteworthy feats: the Rams' seven-year stretch and, likewise, quite a run for Ladden, an avid player who started coaching tennis at the tender age of 60.

Ladden and his team will try to make it eight in a row this week in the PIAA Class AA tournament. Harriton, after defeating Lower Moreland, 4-1, last week for its 11th consecutive District 1 title, will face District 12 champ Masterman in the first round Tuesday.

The championship run will be on the line.

"It is very nerve-racking," Blumenthal said of the streak, "but the pressure also helps you want to win it more, so it kind of gives you motivation. It's not that you don't want to mess up for your team, but you want to keep this amazing streak that we have going."

That streak started shortly after Ladden traded singles and doubles on the baseball diamond for singles and doubles on the tennis court.

"I played baseball, coached baseball, umpired baseball for 50 years," said Ladden, 67.

"I finally gave up coaching when I figured I couldn't get out of the way of a line drive when an 18-year-old hit it at me."

Ladden was a first baseman, at 5-foot-10, for Lafayette College in the 1960s, competing in the College World Series one year, and didn't start playing tennis until he was about 30.

He retired in June 2004, after working in management in the electric industry. That August, Fran Tomaselli, the longtime Conestoga coach for whom Ladden's two daughters had played, told him about Harriton's vacant position. He got the job about two weeks into preseason practice.

"My first year was a Cinderella team, a team that had no right to be at states and no one expected them to do anything at states," Ladden said. "As it turned out, they won."

As the players improved, so did the winning streak. Ladden attributed the success to the Rams' doubles prowess. In district and state team play since he took over, he said, the Rams have won more than 80 matches and lost only one in doubles, with the defeat coming on an injury default.

"The talent that we get here at Harriton, basically the singles players have been coached for several years, maybe even more than that. You're not going to do much to change their style of play . . .," Ladden said.

"However, the doubles players have been playing singles, with or without a coach, up until the time they come to high school and know nothing about doubles."

During the regular season, team competition consists of three singles and four doubles matches. For districts and states, the format changes to three singles and two doubles.

Either way, if a team wins more than half the doubles, it would need only one singles victory to capture the overall match.

District 1 champion Hannah Drayton (20-0), Benstock (14-2), and Blumenthal (10-3) fill the Nos. 1 through 3 singles spots, respectively, for Harriton. The postseason doubles teams are Renee Simms-Jen White (13-3 entering Saturday's district doubles play) and Samantha Krouse-Rachel Heffler (2-0).

Ladden considered this a rebuilding season for Harriton. Last year, he pointed out, his seven-member postseason lineup included six seniors. This postseason, he started just two, Blumenthal and Heffler.

Team tournaments in PIAA girls' tennis began in 2000. Wyomissing won the first four, defeating Harriton in the 2002 final, before the Rams took over.

This likely will be their last chance to win the Class AA tournament. Next year, because of a restructuring in the Lower Merion School District, Harriton expects to move up to the big-school AAA category.

The AA streak should end soon, one way or the other. However, the overall run of state titles could continue.

"Each year is, like, scarier," Drayton said. "We just don't want to disappoint or anything. We're the winning team, kind of, at Harriton, I guess, and we're expected to win. And when it comes to an end, it's going to be sad."