DENVER >> The second the last ball hit the ground during her Class 5A No. 1 doubles state championship match at City Park on Saturday afternoon, Virginia Gomulka broke down in tears.

Two years of finishing runner-up, two years of heartbreak were finally over. She and Lizzy Roth were finally state champions in their last year at Fairview.

“I’ve waited my whole high school (career) to do this. It means a lot,” Gomulka said. “I didn’t think, in the first set, that we were going to win.”

The pair spent their entire senior season laser-focused on Saturday’s acme after Cherry Creek ended their past two state tournament runs just out of reach of that coveted title. They showed that grit through a tough first set against Regis Jesuit’s Quinn Binaxas and Mary Clare Watts in the finals, when they lost 7-5 before storming back to dominate the final two sets with scores of 6-1 and 6-2.

Roth credited their rise to the top to relentlessly improving their poaching and net aggression, both of which came in clutch against the Raiders.

“That was totally the reason we won,” she said. “We’ve been working on that all season and we finally did it.”

As soon as the No. 1 doubles team wrapped up their match, they headed straight to the last active court to cheer on their No. 1 singles teammate — junior Quinn Bernthal — who was engaged in a war with Cherry Creek’s Lorena Cedeno.With her entire team and coaching staff standing just outside the fences, Bernthal rallied to her own state crown. Fans and players alike hung on every point and screamed at the top of their lungs when their favorite player scored.

Bernthal channeled Gomulka and Roth to finish the job after a tough 6-3 loss in the first set turned into 6-2, 6-4 victories in the next two. She brushed off an early 3-0 Cedeno lead in the final, do-or-die set to win four straight games, then put Cedeno away after she tied the game back up at 4-4.

Her team rushed onto the court, screaming and jumping, to congratulate her for her own evasive championship. A year earlier, she lost to Boulder’s Lily Chitambar in the finals.

“I think each year for the past few years, I’ve been crying during this interview, so it’s a little bit of a happy change to get to be smiling now,” Bernthal said. “My team is so great. We have so many great seniors and they won their match, so I fed off the energy from them. They were so supportive during my match, because it was definitely super tough. Lorena is such a great player and such a good friend, too, that I knew it was going to be a battle and they definitely really helped me.”

While Fairview’s day ended on the best note possible, it began on just as much of a high thanks to the No. 2 doubles team of juniors Maya Brakhage and Jane Roth. Their match, unlike those of their 1 singles and 1 doubles teammates, mitigated the drama and suspense.

Instead, they decided to end the run of Cherry Creek’s Sayeesha Garud and Anika Laxminariyan quickly by burying them with 6-1, 6-2 scores. They defended their state crown from a year earlier.

“We’ve been playing doubles together since like fifth grade. We’ve been doubles partners for so long, so we know where each other is on the court,” Brakhage said. “We were really nervous going into it just because we didn’t know who we were playing, but once we were out on the court, we just felt really good.”

With the individual season now fully behind them, the second-seeded Knights will now turn their attention toward the finale of the team state tournament on Tuesday, where they’ll return to City Park to battle head-to-head with top-seeded Cherry Creek.

The ladies will enter the dual with much higher confidence after the performances they saw on Saturday.

“It felt great because we were able to quickly do it and then cheer for our team for the whole rest of time, which I think really helped them,” Jane Roth said. “I’ve never screamed so loud in my whole life.”