Every day for about two months ahead of the USTA Billie Jean King Girls 16s National Championships, 14-year-old Hannah Ayrault would write in a notebook: \u201cI\u2019m going to win the U.S. (nationals), I\u2019m going to win \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
And so it came to be at the Barnes Center on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The 17th-seeded Ayrault, who is moving to Boca Raton, Fla., from Atlanta, completed a storybook run with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 4 Paige Wygodski, of Huntington, N.Y.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was my biggest goal,\u201d Ayrault said. \u201cI did so well because every day I went on court and I trained the hardest I possibly could.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Diego\u2019s Alyssa Ahn, who won the 16s three years ago, will go for the 18s title in the final at 1 p.m. Sunday against Maya Iyengar, of Paradise Valley, Ariz.<\/p>\n
The seventh-seeded Ahn topped No. 5 Alexis Nguyen, of El Dorado Hills, 6-1, 6-7(1), 7-5 \u00a0in the semifinals, while the 17th-seeded Iyengar prevented an all-local final with a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(3) victory over Carlsbad\u2019s Julieta Pareja, the world\u2019s top-ranked junior girl.<\/p>\n
In her two matches before the finals, Ayrault ousted top-seeded Carlota Moreno, of Knoxville, Tenn., 6-4, 0-6, 7-5 and then won another three-set match.<\/p>\n
Yet another third set loomed before Ayrault rebounded from a 4-1 second-set deficit to win the final five games and prevail for the second time in two career meetings against Wygodski.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a little bit unfocused in the second set (the other times) and lost,\u201d said Ayrault, also seeded 17th last year when she lost in the third round. \u201cI told myself that I was going to fight as hard as I possibly could to win this set.\u201d<\/p>\n
The response didn\u2019t surprise Wygodski, 16, who reached the final with a 6-1, 7-6 (5) semifinal win over San Diego\u2019s Yilin Chen, also seeded 17th.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives Hannah motivation when she\u2019s down,\u201d Wygodski said. \u201cI knew that coming into the match, but I just had a breakdown on some of my shots, and she was able to capitalize.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahn came off a quarterfinal victory over No. 1 Akarsha Urbodo, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla,. 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting to the finals means a lot, especially here at home,\u201d said Ahn, 18, who reached the round of 16 last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy game\u2019s at its peak. The farther I\u2019ve gone, the better my tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nguyen lost the last three games while battling left-leg tightness.<\/p>\n
Pareja looked on the way to victory with a 3-0 edge in the second set, but she dropped 11 of the next 12 games.<\/p>\n
Then down 5-0 in the third set, she survived two match points to force a tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Iyengar also beat Pareja in the quarterfinals of an ITF tourney a year ago at the Barnes Center on the way to final.<\/p>\n
Pareja became No. 1 in the ITF rankings after playing in this year\u2019s Wimbledon Juniors final.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: August 9, 2025 at 5:55 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every day for about two months ahead of the USTA Billie Jean King Girls 16s National Championships, 14-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,3549,7264,9656,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-133183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-sandiego","13":"tag-uncategorized","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115001957098267909","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}