Sacred Heart Doubles Duos Pump Out Victories

By Steve Stein

Two all-Chaldean girl’s tennis doubles teams were double trouble for their opponents this spring.

Sisters Marisa and Kayla Nafso and close friends Noor Simon and Angelina Kakos were state champions at No. 1 and No. 3 doubles, respectively, for Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart, which won the Division 4 team state championship for the third straight year and seventh time since 2012.

The Nafso sisters and Simon and Kakos each were the No. 1 seed in their bracket at the state tournament and went undefeated in four matches there.

Their season records were equally as impressive. The Nafso sisters, who live in Bloomfield Hills, were 21-3. Simon, a Bloomfield Hills resident, and Kakos, from Rochester Hills, were 23-3.

Their accomplishments were particularly remarkable because only Marisa Nafso, a junior, had substantial playing experience for Sacred Heart before this season, mainly because there was no season last spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a freshman in 2019, Marisa Nafso won a No. 2 doubles state championship with senior Nolwenn Crosnier. They were 20-5. Marisa Nafso also was 7-2 at No. 3 singles. Simon, a senior this season, was 2-1 at No. 3 doubles in 2018 and 0-3 at No. 3 and No. 4 doubles in 2019. Kakos, a junior this season, was 3-0 at No. 4 doubles in 2019.

Neither the Nafso sisters nor Simon and Kakos had played tennis together competitively before this season, but they weren’t strangers to the sport.

“Kayla and I practice together year-round and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” Marisa Nafso said about herself and her sister, a freshman this season. “We also play two other sports together for Sacred Heart (basketball and field hockey),” she said. “That helped us build our communication and teamwork skills prior to this tennis season.”

Being doubles partners and sisters had its advantages and disadvantages, the sisters said. In the end, they said, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.

“Because we were doubles partners, we were around each other more than we usually are,” Marisa Nafso said. “That was challenging because it made it difficult to separate home life from tennis.

“Plus, because we’re so close, we found it challenging to control our emotions at times when we were playing. We could pump up each other quickly, but we could get down on ourselves if even one of us was having a bad day.”

Simon said she’s close friends with Kakos, and their families are close. “Angelina and I have hung out together a lot,” Simon said. “Because of that, we were able to communicate well during our matches. We didn’t get mad. We talked things out.”

Kakos said she and Simon were on the same wavelength on the tennis court because of their friendship. That was important to her because of why she enjoys playing doubles. “I like having a partner to rely on, and for a partner to rely on me,” she said.

First-year coach Chris Shaya guided Sacred Heart to the team state championship. The Gazelles scored 29 points at the state tournament in early June in Kalamazoo, beating runner-up Traverse City St. Francis by six points.

“Our girls did a great job at the state tournament, even though only four had ever played at state before this season and we didn’t play our best tennis there,” Shaya said. “We were young this season, but we had a lot of hidden gems. The girls got better at handling pressure as the season went on. St. Francis had a lot of juniors and seniors. They thought this was the year they could get us. They couldn’t.”

Neither the Nafso sisters nor Simon and Kakos faced an opponent from St. Francis in the state tournament.

The Nafso sisters rallied from a second-set loss to defeat Delanie Minnema and Caroline Rudolph from Grand Rapids Northpointe Christian 7-6 (3), 2-6, 6-1 in the No. 1 doubles state championship match.

That was the only set the Nafso sisters lost at the state tournament.

Simon and Kakos didn’t lose a set in Kalamazoo. They defeated Hannah Nelson and Brooke Tietz from Grand Rapids West Catholic 7-6 (5), 6-4 in the No. 3 doubles state championship match.

Shaya, 41, a former star high school tennis star in Michigan and Florida and University of Michigan tennis player, has been giving private tennis lessons for nearly 20 years. He’s the tennis director at Bloomfield Tennis & Fitness in Bloomfield Township.

Shaya coached the Troy High School boy’s tennis team in 2005 and 2006, leading the Colts to a fifth-place finish at the state tournament both years. He put together his lineup at Sacred Heart before the season with input from the players.

“I asked for feedback. I didn’t want to be a dictator,” he said. “As it turned out, everybody on the team got along so well that constructing the lineup took care of itself.”

Marisa Nafso and she and her sister each wanted to play No. 1 doubles, “but we weren’t sure we would play together because we’re sisters. I was supposed to play singles, but I thought I could be more of an asset to the team as a doubles player.”

Shaya said his theme for the season was simple. “We didn’t want to have any self-inflicted wounds, like a double-fault on a serve or a missed return. The girls bought into that,” he said.

The girls also bought into other aspects of Shaya’s coaching. “What our coach said always made a lot of sense,” Kakos said. “Coach Shaya always said to worry only about our match, to focus on what we needed to do,” said Simon, who graduated from Sacred Heart this spring and plans to attend Oakland University in pursuit of a career in dentistry.

Kayla Nafso said a key to Sacred Heart’s success was everyone having mutual respect for each other. “Everyone got along well, upperclassmen and lowerclassmen,” she said. “Our success also was the result of the coaching and support we received from our coaches and parents. Every practice was a great practice and every match brought us closer together.”