Samantha Peterson and Madelyn Conrad were crowned District XI Doubles Tennis champions on Monday afternoon at Lehigh University where they won their matches 6-0, 6-1 against Kaitlyn Swint and Natalie Sinai.

Peterson said, “It’s just awesome. We’ve been playing doubles together for three years, and we were determined to get here.”

The Liberty pair began the tournament with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Emmaus, followed by a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Freedom, a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Nazareth, and a 6-0, 7-6 win over Southern Lehigh.

“It just hit me we just won districts,” said Conrad. “I wasn’t thinking about that; just thinking about hitting the ball and getting the point.”

Conrad won the last two points of the match with her backhand volley.

“I knew it was one of my strengths, and I tried to use it as much as I could,” she said. “Everything just clicked, and we are good at setting up the point.”

The Hurricanes were also good at reading the court.

“When I hit, I can kind of see where they are, so I tried to keep them deep,” said Peterson. “We knew Kaitlyn was going to [play close to the net], so we practiced that way.”

It was Swint who served the fourth game of the second set, which was won by the Freedom pair.

“I was very surprised,” Swint said. “[The match] went fast. The first set was really intense.”

The Patriots could have won the first game; in fact, they knew they should have.

Freedom coach Mark Sigmon said, “We should have, and then it snowballed, and we got freight-trained. We could have played a little better; it probably could have been 6-2, 6-2, but [Liberty] was just dominant.”

Sinai could feel the dominance as well.

“We wanted to just get the ball back, and they were hitting hard,” she said.

But Peterson knew that hitting power with power would eventually fail.

“You have to wait for your chance and set the point back up,” said Peterson.

Liberty coach Leo Schnalzer believed the Liberty pair, who are both seniors, could ultimately get to the district final, even when they were freshmen.

“They read the court really well, their lobs were executed at the right time, they set up a lot of points, and they worked so well together,” Schnalzer said. “I didn’t tell them anything today that they already didn’t know. I just showed them where the court is.”