Hyde School’s Marta Amoros Juan wins Maine singles tennis title

Marta Amoros Juan did not just outlast the No. 1 seed at Bates College. The Hyde School senior from Spain turned a tense 6-4, 7-6 (2) win over Thornton Academy’s Emily Winkler into a Maine singles championship on Monday, May 18, in Lewiston.

The final came after a tournament path that began with qualifying on May 2 and moved through rounds at Colby College and Bates College before the girls finals started at 10 a.m. Amoros Juan, the No. 6 seed, finished the day with the bracket’s top seed across the net and finished it on her terms, closing out the tiebreak 7-2.

What made the result stand out in Bath was not only the seed line. Amoros Juan was the only Hyde player in either the boys or girls tournament field, which made her run feel singular for a school that has just 137 students in grades 9-12 and postgraduate education. Hyde, founded in 1966, is a private, co-educational college-preparatory boarding school, and its international program draws students from 22 countries. In that setting, one player’s title carried the weight of the whole program.

Amoros Juan looked ready to make the final a quick one when she opened up a 5-0 lead in the first set. Winkler answered with her own surge in the second, racing ahead 5-1 and forcing Amoros Juan into another scramble. The Hyde senior responded the way she had all tournament, clawing back game by game and carrying the match into the tiebreak.

That composure was not new. Amoros Juan had already shown it in the semifinal, where she remembered rallying from 3-0 down in the second set before reaching the final. She advanced there by beating Cony’s Kira Gregor 6-2, 6-3 after taking down Sabine Wells-Puckett of Presque Isle 6-4, 6-3 in the quarterfinals. Winkler, meanwhile, had knocked off Brunswick’s Ruby Glenn and 2025 state finalist Molly Tefft on her way to the championship match.

Hyde head coach John Young said he was emotional because Amoros Juan “really fought.” Young said the team had worked on technical patterns, but the emotional side of the match had to come from the player herself. For a small Bath program with one athlete in the statewide singles field, that fight produced a title that will carry well beyond Lewiston and into Hyde’s next season.