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Tournament Summary
Southern California Wild Cards Kosakowski and Hardebeck Capture International Spring Championships
Smith and Daigle Take 16s Titles
by
Colette Lewis, 16 April 2010
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Krista Hardebeck and Daniel Kosakowski made the most of their wild cards into the ITF Grade 1 International Spring Championships last week at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., claiming their first international junior titles without leaving their section.
Hardebeck defeated No. 8 seed
Sachia Vickery 0-6, 6-3, 6-2 in the final, while Kosakowski won the battle of
UCLA recruits by downing unseeded
Clay Thompson 6-1, 6-2 in boys championship match.
The pair may not have had the ITF points to merit seeding at the tournament, in its sixth year at the USTA Player Development Training Center-West, but both are reigning USTA 18s champions - Hardebeck is the Clay Court titleholder and Kosakowski the Winter champion. Rarely competing in international events outside Southern California, Hardebeck, of Santa Ana, Calif., and Kosakowski, from Downey, Calif., beat seeds in the first round and the No. 1 seeds later in the tournament, making an unequivocal statement about the level of competition in their home state.
Hardebeck, who won the 16s International Spring championship last year as a 14-year-old, took out No. 13 seed Rachel Kahan in the first round and No. 1 seed Katarena Paliivets of Canada in the semifinals to set up her first meeting with the 14-year-old Vickery. Neither had lost a set on their way to the final, so Vickery's blanking of Hardebeck in the first set of the championship match was a surprise.
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