Veterans Bareis, Ashba win Kailua Night Doubles in three
By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer
KAILUA — An intriguing tennis battle between generations was nearly lost to the elements last night in the final of the second annual Kailua Racquet Club Women's Night Doubles Tournament.
Eventually, age won out over youth and rain flurries.
Rosie Bareis and Ashlee Ashba outlasted four rain delays and Janalle and Kimi Kaloi, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, to win the championship, and $1,000, before a soggy stadium court that started out packed (400-plus). By the time it was over at 10 p.m., fewer than a hundred remained.
"It wouldn't be Kailua without this," said Bareis, who grew up nearby. "Everytime it rained, it was a blessing of Hawai'i tennis."
Bareis, 41, owned Hawai'i's No. 1 women's doubles ranking from 1978-'87, with University of Hawai'i teammate Rose Thomas. Bareis moved to California in 1995 to become tennis director at the Harbor Bay Club in Alameda — the 1999 U.S. Tennis Association Organization of the Year. She and Ashba, a 35-year-old from Sacramento, found each other in time to win three national age-group championships. Between them, they have 19 national titles.
The Kalois — Janalle is a senior headed for Santa Clara in the fall and Kimi a sophomore — have a long list of junior accomplishments and a state high school doubles championship together. They are working on another at Kamehameha, when they aren't beating up on older players, as they did this week, and missing proms, as Janalle did last night.
But while the differences in the players' lives are dramatic, the differences in their games were not last night.
The Kaloi sisters broke Ashba's serve in the first game, but Bareis and Ashba broke right back and the set stayed on serve until the eighth game.
Down 15-40 on her serve, Janalle forced two return errors to stifle break points, but followed up with a pair of double faults to give Bareis and Ashba a 5-3 advantage. Ashba lost the first two points of her serve, but on the next four points Bareis bounced an overhead over the fence and Ashba sliced a winner Kimi could not get her racket under, then launched two overheads to close the set.
The Kalois, unable to beat their older opponents to the net in the first set, didn't make the same mistake in the second. They won the first game easily, broke Ashba in the second and pulled ahead 3-0 on a poach by Kimi.
Bareis finally served her team onto the scoreboard. A break in the next game put the set back on serve, again. But after another rain delay the sisters finished the set off, and won the opening game of the final set.
Bareis and Ashba roared back, winning the next four games. They were a point away from going up 5-2 when the rain did its own roaring back. The players dried off for 28 minutes and played through six deuces. The Kalois couldn't convert four break points and Bareis finally won on her fifth game point.
"They just had a little more experience so they could play the tougher points," said Janalle, who hoped to see the "last few minutes of her prom."
A break later, it was over and Bareis was nearly in tears with a victory in a tournament she had grown up watching the state's best men play. She read her speech off a very old piece of paper.
"So much history ... " Bareis said. "I asked God to just let me play good one more time."
SHORT LOBS: Former BYU-Hawai'i player Maylani Ah Hoy teamed with Seasider junior Hana Krivonozkova to capture third place last night, 8-3, over Vanne Akagi-Bustin and Sylvia Schenck. ... BYU-Hawai'i's top two doubles teams were seeded 1 and 2 in the tournament, but had to drop out because of injuries. ... Ah Hoy and Krivonozkova replaced one of those teams.
