JULY 2021

sports
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
From left: Number one doubles state champions Marisa (left) and Kayla Nafso. Number three doubles state champions Angelina
Kakos (left) and Noor Simon.
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
Chris Shaya
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 fifthplace
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.”
PHOTOS BY SUE SPANGLER
36 CHALDEAN NEWS JULY 2021