After winning well under half their games last year, the boy’s tennis team is playoff-bound this year. “The first couple practices, we talked a lot about our goal being 10 wins in the regular season,” Coach Shuyler Henderson said.
The team is likely to achieve that goal, with a few games remaining in the schedule, and it will be many players’ first time in the playoffs.
Henderson, who is in his first year as coach, has been generally impressed. “I think individually, I know there are some guys who probably wanted to do a little bit better than they have this year and maybe some guys who weren’t expecting to do as well. So I think all things considered, we did pretty well with our expectations,” Henderson said.
Players’ expectations were similar. “I think the expectations coming into the season were that we would try and definitely improve from what we did last year,” sophomore Trevor Frost said, “I think we’ve definitely met those expectations, as we have improved quite marginally.”
Sophomore Mathew Ramarge expressed similar feelings. “ I thought we were going to have a great team because we had a lot of new younger people,” Ramarge said.
Junior Jinu Manalel was happy not only with the product on the court but how the atmosphere has changed since last year. “It’s actually a lot more fun than it was last year and I feel like it’s going to continue and we’re going to get better… so my expectation for this year was that it’s just going to be another year that it’s going to be just playing tennis, it was boring. You know, just playing matches, practicing. But no, it was more, like, it was more immersive,” Manalel said.
The team is likely going to be playing Loudoun Valley to start the playoffs. They lost to Valley earlier in the season 5-4. “Last match, we did not do very well in serves. So, I’d say we practice serves a little bit more this time,” Manalel said.
Henderson is hopeful his team can win.“I think our strength is in our depth. We have a really deep team compared to a lot of teams in the district who maybe are a little more top-heavy, so I think that’s definitely an advantage for us, but as far as things we need to work on, I think we know that our strong suit is singles and we can definitely work on our doubles a little bit more,” Henderson said.
The team will be playing six singles games and three doubles. “I think now that we’ve seen them at least once, we know what they’re good at. We know where we might be able to exploit some of their weaknesses,” Henderson said.
Players’ attitudes were similar. “I’m going to try and win. I’m going to do the best that I can, but whatever happens, happens,” Frost said.
