Fall Sports

Girls varsity tennis crushes high-ranked rivals

Talia Gottlieb, Sports Writer|September 26, 2015

Tricia Engel, junior, prepares to serve in her doubles match. “Winning a match is a great feeling. You win not only for yourself, but for your team,” Engel said.

Homestead varsity girls tennis conquered their long-term and highly ranked rivals, the Cedarburg High School varsity girls tennis team, in an intense and heightened three-hour match on Thursday, Sept. 24. With total triumph for all of the Homestead singles players, the final score read 4-3, an incredible win for the Highlanders.

Singles players, Alyssa Boyer, sophomore; Anna Kreynin, senior; Katya Mikhailenko, junior; and Helen Watkins, sophomore, were all individually victorious in all of their matches, putting Homestead up four points to Cedarburg with three. “We were very prepared to go against the number one team in the state. We went in with a lot of confidence from weeks of preparation and practice, and we knew that we wanted to win,” Watkins said.

Cedarburg’s tennis team has been ranked first in the state for the entire season, so this win for Homestead was a huge accomplishment and victory.

Cedarburg and Homestead are in the same conference and sectional competitions, so beating Cedarburg was an extremely important win in terms of where and how the Highlanders are going to be ranked going into the final championships of the season. The team knew that they needed this win, and knew that they had a shot at taking down their opponents, but the defeat still came as a surprise when it became a reality.

“The team stayed really positive throughout all of the matches; we stayed really focused, and in the end, it paid off,” Lexi Heth, junior, said after the match. “It’s a huge deal that we won against Cedarburg; our road to state depended on this match. Beating them put us in a lot better position heading into conference matches.”

The girls will compete in the conference competition on Wednesday, Sept. 30 through Thursday, Oct. 1, where they will again go head to head with Cedarburg and all of the other teams in their conference. “This win will definitely help our team with seeding for the conference tournament and subsectionals,” Madeline Slicker, senior, said. “The final score was really close, and it really showed us how much every match counts.” This win brings the girls closer and closer to winning the state title, giving them the boost of confidence they need to beat other teams they’d lost to in the past.