A month ago, Montour looked like a team that could challenge perennial top dogs Peters Township, Mt. Lebanon and Upper St. Clair for the 3A Section 4 title.

Not only did the Spartans have Katherine Marks, the No. 1 singles player a year ago and the No. 25 sophomore in the state, returning, the team had picked up Isabela Paixao, the No. 7 junior who left Our Lady of the Sacred Heart after her freshman year to spend last year both at a tennis academy and being homeschooled.

That was then. This is now.

“We would have had a good 1-2 with everybody else moving down a spot, but Katherine decided to transfer to OLSH and she told us a week before tryouts when we already had our doubles teams good to go and we had to split them up,” Montour coach Eric Hazlett said. “We also had to move one of our doubles [senior Carly Bruscemi] up to No. 3 [singles] and it messed everything up, so we’re going to be decent, but not where we thought we were going to be.”

Paixao is a solid addition and joins the team as the No. 2 junior in the WPIAL behind only Norwin’s Maria Santilli, a 3A singles quarterfinalist a year ago and one of the early favorites to make a run at North Allegheny seniors Anna and Tina Li for the championship.

Although Paixao has played exceptionally skilled competition over the past year, she still has to go through a learning curve in her first year in the WPIAL. Last week, in her first varsity match, she was knocked off by Peters Township’s Anna Komer, who is the No. 8 senior in the state and No. 3 in the WPIAL.

“I know that she’s played these girls in our section in tournaments, but I told her that playing in tournaments is a lot different from playing in high school,” Hazlett said. “She’s used to these really good players that like to just bang with her and hopefully that match woke her up because I have a lot of high expectations for her.”

Beaver

A year ago, it was something of a surprise when Anne Taylor took over the top spot on the Bobcats from Moriah Bridges.

Surprise turned into shock when she pulled off an upset of top-seeded Hannah Phillips of Carlynton, 6-1, 7-6 (7-5) to win the school’s first singles title since Alexandra Kaluza in 2002.

Now, Taylor comes into the season as the clear No. 1 for the defending WPIAL 2A champion Bobcats, the No. 19 ranked senior in the state, top senior in 2A in the WPIAL and already has committed to play collegiately at Marian (Ind.) University. With those credentials it’s easy to see why Taylor is in every players’ sights coming into the season. But she’s not the only player at Beaver who has an opportunity to win a title this year.

Bridges, who was the team’s No. 1 in 2014, is still one of the better players in 2A and took Phillips to the brink in the quarterfinals before losing, 10-7, in a pro-set match. She also teamed with Devyn Campbell to qualify for the state doubles finals.

This year, Campbell will be in the No. 1 doubles slot while junior Sydni Lewis takes over as the No. 3 singles player. That kind of depth and experience makes Beaver a tough team — and a solid favorite — when the playoffs open in early October.

Fox Chapel

When Laurel Shymansky graduated, there was obviously going to be some movement at the top of the Fox Chapel lineup to fill the void left by the Duquesne recruit.

Junior Amanda Nord, who won the PIAA 3A doubles title while paired with Shymansky a year ago, was the obvious choice to become the team’s No. 1 player. Not only has she been to the state playoffs each of her two years with the team, she is the No. 11 junior in the state and No. 4 in the WPIAL behind Santilli, Paixao and Eugenia Lee of North Allegheny.

Filling Nord’s spot as a top-flight No. 2 might have been difficult. Luckily for Fox Chapel, it had a ringer in waiting as Charlotte James, the No. 3 freshman in the state and No. 1 in the WPIAL, was ready to step in.

With Nord and James at the top, Fox Chapel has underclassmen in its top six spots. The only senior is in the No. 2 doubles with Tanvi Marengenti. Though this squad might not be quite ready to oust North Allegheny from the top spot, it could certainly make a run at a state berth in the WPIAL 3A team playoffs.

First Published: September 2, 2016, 4:00 a.m.