Girls’ tennis celebrates 13 seniors, six move on to district tournament

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, May 16, 2017

The Vashon High School girls’ tennis team entered the last week of its regular season with a 6-4 overall record and a shot at the Nisqually League title.

Last Monday, the team hosted Kings High School, which brought a large team and enabled most of the Pirates to get in a late season match. Kings uses a different format than other schools and more matches count toward the varsity score. This was a nice change since Monday was also senior day and it allowed more seniors to play in the varsity matches.

The Pirates lost the first three singles matches, although seniors Hannah Nelson and Tabitha Gray pushed their matches to third-set tiebreakers.

Senior Peytra Gard closed out her season with a nice singles win.

In doubles, Beka Lematua and Lizzie Sutherland got an important win, as did Jane Oswald and Emme Osborne. Vashon could not win the final doubles match and Kings escaped with a 4-3 win thanks to several tiebreaker wins.

In what turned out to be the final junior varsity match for the Pirates, the JV team played really well showing great enthusiasm, a lot of improvement and plenty of promise for next season.

Prior to the Kings match, the team said goodbye to 13 seniors. Many of these seniors had been with the program for four years — for others, it was their first year, but all these seniors worked hard, improved their tennis skills and proved to be great teammates over the course of the season. These seniors comprised a great group and all made valuable contributions to the program, supported one another and had a great time. Seniors Nelson, Gray, Gard, Lematua, Oswald, Linnet Chappelka, Yulia Fiala, Abbie Fiano, Lili Helsby, Alex Koriath, Taylor Lighthall, Jessica Merritt and Teddy Westphal will all be missed next year.

Next up for the Pirates was a match with Charles Wright (CW), which would determine the league title. CW was focused on this match — they did not bring their JV team and changed up their lineup. Initially, the tactic looked good for them as they jumped out to a quick lead, winning the first sets easily at number one and number two singles, as well as number one doubles. From this point, however, the Pirates began to rebound.

CW finished the win at number one singles, and Vashon’s Nelson came back to force a tiebreaker in number two singles. Although she eventually lost that tiebreaker, it was an indication that the Pirates would at least fight back.

In the number one doubles match, Lematua and Sutherland played their best match of the year, coming back from their first set loss to take the second set tiebreaker and then win a 10-point tiebreaker for the match. This comeback proved to be the pivotal match, since Fiala and Tobin Vaughan took a strong win at number two doubles, and then Oswald and Emme Osborne completed the comeback with a dominating win at number three doubles.

At the end of the day, the Vashon doubles teams really came through, sweeping the doubles to give the Pirates a 3-2 win and the Nisqually League title. The win was a great way for the team to finish the regular season, and the league title was a testament to the efforts of every player on the team all season long.

After one day of practice, the Pirates sent their top six players to the league tournament on Thursday. The tournament was moved to Sprinker’s indoor courts due to rain. This tournament is a long day of matches and focuses more on individual play than overall team results, and determines who will advance to the district tournament. The tournament, as usual, featured some excellent tennis by all the players involved, some of whom played up to three matches in the day. The Pirates had mixed results over the course of the day but, in the end, achieved their ultimate goal — advancing all six players to the district tourney.

In singles, Nelson advanced with a hard-earned third place. Finishing just behind her was Lizzie Maciejewski in fourth. In doubles, the pair of Fiala/Vaughan also fought their way to third place, with Lematua /Sutherland finishing in fourth. All Vashon’s players will play in the district tournament tomorrow, Thursday, at Sprinker Tennis Center in Tacoma.

— Pat Mulvihill is a VHS’ girls’ tennis coach.