SOUTHERN SECTION GIRLS’ TENNIS INDIVIDUAL CHAMPIONSHIPS : Vaughan’s Run Comes to Halt in Quarterfinals

Corona del Mar’s Nina Vaughan was good for one upset, but mental and physical exhaustion caught up with her Thursday in the Southern Section Individual tennis quarterfinals. Her remarkable freshman season ended with a 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, loss to Santa Barbara San Marcos’ Kara Warkentin at the Lindborg Racquet Club.

“She was being really aggressive, hitting a lot of angles and moving me around,” Vaughan said. “She knew I was tired and was running me around.”

Vaughan defeated third-seeded Brandi Freudenberg of El Modena, 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, in the round of 16, making it Freudenberg’s earliest tournament exit in four years. She reached the semifinals as a freshman and junior and the quarterfinals as a junior.

“I was tight,” said Freudenberg, who has signed a letter of intent with UCLA. “I came out really slow. I wasn’t moving well at all.”

Part of Freudenberg’s sluggishness had to with a quadriceps muscle she pulled in the girls’ 18 nationals last week in Detroit. Still, she won the last four games of the second set and appeared to have momentum heading into the third set. But a 10-minute break seemed to change that.

“I had time to stiffen up,” she said. “I didn’t want to take a break.”

Vaughan, who complained of being tired between sets, went out and hit winner after winner and wiped out Freudenberg in the last set, 6-1. The baseline winners kept coming for Vaughan in the first set against Warkentin, who beat Vaughan, 6-4, during the season. But she hit the wall in the second set and Warkentin began dictating the points.

“I had just played three, third-set tiebreakers last week in St. Louis (at the girls’ 14 indoors) and I didn’t get back until Monday,” Vaughan said. “I’ve just played too much tennis. I need a couple days off.”

Exhaustion wasn’t the problem for Villa Park’s Faye DeVera, but Palos Verdes Peninsula’s Amanda Basica’s forehand and steady play was. After beating Los Angeles Marlborough’s Kate Callaghan, 7-5, 6-2, in the round of 16, DeVera was beaten by the top-seeded Basica, the world’s 12th-ranked player in the girls’ 18 division, 6-2, 6-2.

“I tried to come in off her high balls, but my timing was off and I shanked a few and almost hit some people on the other court,” DeVera said. “So I stopped trying that.”

DeVera and Freudenberg were hoping for better draws, especially after second-seeded Violette Ahn of Beverly Hills pulled out with an illness before the tournament began.

“They should have redone the draw,” Freudenberg said.

Said DeVera: “When I saw the draw, I laughed.”

Dana Hills’ Michelle Johnson and Katie Tierney weren’t laughing after blowing leads in all three sets to Peninsula’s Alyson and Shana Gray in the quarterfinals before losing, 7-6 (7-2), 5-7, 6-2.

“We just weren’t focused to play in the third set,” Tierney said. “We just didn’t have the desire. We were ahead and playing good, but we got tentative and let them back into it.”

The only survivors from Orange County were Corona del Mar’s fourth-seeded team of Megan Wachtler and Alissa Scott, who didn’t drop a set in advancing to today’s semifinals, which begin at 9 a.m.