by Selene Ashewood ‘22

This year’s tennis season has already ramped up, with at least two games each week leading up to spring break. The Division 2 (D2) girls and boys teams plan to channel their competitive spirits into an exciting and challenging season with high expectations.

Starting the season with matches against Blair, a D1 school, threw the team into the deep end with tough results. Of the seven matches the girls side played, only fourth singles and second doubles won. But other players did not go down without a fight; sophomore Erin Sanchez and senior Kenzie Flanagan spent nearly three hours each playing out their matches, which each went to third sets.

“We have a very competitive group that wants to win,” said Coach Michael King, who added that the goal still is to have fun and continue to improve every single day. Leading the team as first singles is senior Peyton Sokol, who is a four-year member of the team and a co-captain. Sokol said the collective hope of this season is “[winning] divisionals for the third time in a row.”

On the boys side there exists the same phenomenon of more new players than returning ones. Of the only four who have played previously, “[seniors] Camilo Illanes and Will Twemlow are our team leaders” and are expected to be reliable winners, according to Coach Thomas Maley. Illanes is a valuable asset to his team, proven by his tennis commitment to play at College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Twemlov, who plays second singles, is described as a “seasoned veteran who always [gives] an outstanding effort” by Maley. As for the rest of the team, there is a collective hope for steady improvement during the season.

For their first match against the boys of Blair, they faced the same challenge as the girls team of going up against a team in D1, and Illanes was the only player to win his match. For a short term goal, boys tennis wants to extend games and play out more points with less forced errors. This was not shown in their first match against Blair.

In their first matches against D2 competition on March 26, both teams had some dominant performances against Blake. For girls, all placements except first and second singles won their two-set matches. As for the boys, they also were victorious with the only losses happening on first and second doubles courts. This was a strong result to show that the team has rebounded after a disappointing loss to open the new spring season.