Women’s tennis strikes Sheldon down

By Judy Park,
BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

The women’s varsity tennis team really switched it up while playing against Sheldon on Oct. 11, beating them 9-0.

Head coach Sally Hosley pulled the No. 1 and No. 2 singles players so that the players who ranked below were bumped up the top spots on the team.

“We’re such a strong team we can switch around some singles players and some doubles players where they don’t normally play and still have a good match,” Hosley said. “And that was my goal today, to get some of the girls who don’t get to play good matches play competitive matches today.”

The team was confident going into the game having beat Sheldon before in a previous game.

“In the past I think we beat them 8-1 or 9-0, so it’s a good chance to test out some new things, some new strategies, refine our skills and have a good time because the girls are really nice and it’s a good chance to talk to them,” senior Addie O’Hanlon said.

Senior Chiara Crenna-Armstrong was excited to be playing the No. 2 spot for the team.

“I play No. 4 singles against most teams but I don’t usually play No. 2 so it’s nice to have a challenge,” she said.

“I expect to be able to try a lot of different aspects of my game and work on some things that I want to work on like hitting the ball harder,” Crenna-Armstrong said.

Nine games took place at the same time strewn across the different courts and all that could be heard was the sliding of tennis shoes on the concrete courts and impact of the tennis ball with the racket.

The team really wiped out its opponents with the final game with the final player, senior Amy Fang, winning a hard-fought battle that stretched on for nearly an hour and a half.

On the other hand, senior Rebecca Engelhard along with her doubles partner O’Hanlon, really hit their game off, breezing past their opponents with ease.

Engelhard was satisfied with her team’s plays as well as her own. “Personally, I think I did really well. My serves were in and I had a lot of aces. My returns were kind of off and on. Some of them were not so good, but overall I think I did pretty well,” she said.

O’Hanlon agreed that the game went well. “We’ve played them before and they are good players. They have great cross courts and good volleys, hard shots, so we still had to keep on our toes especially at the end when they got a point. It was a good game,” she said.

Senior Francis Quynn added that the team has been doing very well this season. “I think overall we’ve been strengthening our doubles which is really important and moving our doubles around so we’re working together and figuring out who plays the best with who,” she said. “And I think we’re doing the best we could be doing right now.”

The team has one more match on Thursday against Franklin who they lost to the last time they played and then the team has a league match the following Tuesday against Pleasant Grove.
O’Hanlon really just emphasized how she wanted to enjoy each game as the season is coming to a close.

“I’m gonna try to have a good time… Tomorrow is our last home game match so I wanna enjoy it because I’m a senior,” O’Hanlon said.