Stonington — Sarah Hage entered Wednesday’s Eastern Connecticut Conference girls’ singles title match as the two-time defending champion.

Not long after that, however, Hage, the Waterford High School junior, was down a set to Stonington powerhouse Grace Duggan. The string on Hage’s main racket broke during the second game. The grip on her backup racket was slippery.

And the 5-foot-11 Duggan kept firing winners, charging to the net and putting away smash after smash.

“It kind of made me lose hope a little,” Hage said. “I had to tell myself, ‘No. I have another whole set. It’s a whole new start. I can do this.’”

Hage, the tournament’s top seed, came back to capture her third ECC singles title with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 victory over Duggan, the No. 2 seed, who handed the unbeaten Hage her first defeat in a set this season.

Stonington juniors Katya Snegovskikh and Lauren Buckley, the top seed, edged teammates Gwen McGugan and Angelina Williams, the No. 6 seed, for the ECC doubles title, also needing three sets. Snegovskikh and Buckley dropped the first set 6-3 before winning 6-2, 6-1.

Before the second set began, Hage asked for a few extra moments to have the grip on her backup racket changed out by Waterford coach Ed Kolnaski. The two spoke as Kolnaski worked diligently to get Hage back on the court.

“He talked about how I had to hit more angles, how I had to keep the ball deep,” Hage said. “Kind of move the ball around the court more, hit more angles and make less unforced errors. He just told me he was proud of me and that I was playing well and that I just have to focus and get back into it.”

Duggan didn’t make it easy, breaking Hage’s serve for a 1-0 lead in the second set and also leading 2-1 before Hage hit her stride to win five straight games and even the match at one set each.

Duggan led again, 3-2, after she broke Hage in the third set and had a 30-0 advantage for a chance to go up 4-2. Hage forced the game to deuce, though, and tied things at 3-3.

Up 5-3, Hage served out the match, getting the final point on a blast down the right sideline more than two and a half hours after the start.

“She’s incredibly consistent,” Duggan said of Hage. “It’s very hard to get a point off her because she’s so consistent. Even shots that might not come back against other people, she gets back. It’s really very impressive.”

Duggan said the more aggressive she played, the better chance she had.

“I definitely was exhausted but I had to push through,” Duggan said. “I really tried to be aggressive and go to the net a lot. That’s pretty much it. That’s how I play my best.”

Hage, who defeated Stonington No. 1 singles player Maddie Hamm for the title the last two seasons, seemed a little more fidgety than her usual self Wednesday, bouncing up and down between points and often drying her racket grip on a towel.

“I was definitely a little nervous,” Hage said. “I was trying not to get down on myself every time I lost some games. I had to encourage myself and I had to keep getting proud of the shots that I was hitting well, forget about the ones I missed.”

Hage credited Duggan with “one of the hardest serves I’ve ever had to play against.”

“She played phenomenal,” Hage said.

Snegovskikh and Buckley, meanwhile, each captured the second ECC doubles title of their careers but the first while playing with each other.

Buckley won the championship last year along with teammate Marcella Hamm, beating Snegovskikh and Katie Johnstone. Snegovskikh and Johnstone took the 2021 title over Stonington’s Erin Motherway and Emily Fulling.

“That’s the best part of being at Stonington, we have just such good players, it’s just an honor to be on the team,” Buckley said of the latest of the all-Stonington matchups. “It’s always a little awkward playing your teammates for a title but we play each other in practice all the time; all these guys are so amazing.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com