Girls tennis finished their season with a respectable record of 6-6. The team maintained this solid record despite being comprised of so many inexperienced players.
The team’s main strength is in its more experienced singles players. Four of the team’s nine players are freshmen, and only four players have previous experience on the team. The past season’s division winning team included a total of 15 players, nine of whom were seniors.
“We have some key returning players at the top from last year’s team that won their division, but our doubles teams don’t have a lot of experience,” head coach Robert Stohlman said.
Stohlman says that he is overall satisfied with how the team has performed when taking into account that this year was more of a rebuilding season for RHS. The girls had a key 6-1 win over strong competitor Damascus HS, and another win over Magruder HS 4-3.
“The majority of our team this year is new freshmen with little experience, but we are very united and close as a team,” sophomore singles player Brianna Oa��Neil said. “The season went better than I could have expected because even though we won our division last year we lost all our good players and as a team dropped in skill level overall.”
The chemistry between the players is one of the team’s greatest assets and has been one of the major factors in its success this season.
“We work so well together and we all help each other when we don’t quite understand the game,” junior singles player Julia Eckenrode said. “In doubles your partner becomes your best friend because you depend so much on each other and I think that has helped us a lot this year.”
Tennis will only be losing one senior next year and the team expects to have a successful 2017 season.