By Alberto Amalfi | @Tennis_Now | Monday, November 27, 2023
Dana Mathewson turned Santiago’s purple clay into gold highway.
San Diego native Mathewson rolled to a pair of gold medals—in girls’s singles and doubles—on the 2023 Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile.
Mathewson received two of the three gold medals Team USA collected on the Games. Her singles gold medal qualifies Mathewson for 2024 Paralympics in Paris.
Mathewson scored a 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 victory over Colombia’s Angelica Bernal within the girls’s singles remaining, incomes an automated bid to subsequent summer time’s Paralympic Games in Paris.
In the doubles gold medal match, Mathewson and 16-year-old Maylee Phelps (Portland, Ore.) beat Brazil’s Maria Fernanda Alves and Meirycoll Duval in a match that got here down to a couple key factors within the match tiebreak, 3-6, 6-2 10-8.
“Once you get a taste of these medals, you want more,” Mathewson mentioned. “This has been an amazing time.
“I never expected to be the flag-bearer; I never expected to get two gold medals. It has been unbelievable.”
Mathewson beforehand began off her milestone week as one in all Team USA’s two flag-bearers for the opening ceremony, an honor she shared with judo athlete Ben Goodrich, and when she returns to the U.S., she’ll get married in per week’s time. Mathewson has now received 4 profession Parapan medals.
The quad doubles staff of David Wagner (Walla Walla, Wash./San Diego) and Andrew Bogdanov (Prescott, Ariz.) rounded out the U.S. medalists with a bronze. Wagner and Bogdanov beat the Colombian staff of Daniel Campaz and Albeiro Moreno, 6-4, 6-4, within the third-place match.
Held each 4 years and one yr forward of the Paralympic Games, the Parapan American Games are the most important multi-sport occasion within the Americas.
Photo credit: USTA
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