(April 24, 2015) The Stephen Decatur girls’ tennis teams earned victories over the Snow Hill Eagles and Wi-Hi Indians this week.
On Monday, Decatur took a trip down the road to face Snow Hill. The Lady Seahawks came home with a win in all seven matches.
Senior Delaney Iacona (8-1), junior Katie Withers (8-0), senior Mallory Rolleston (8-0) and freshman Leila Mirza (8-0) topped their first through fourth singles opponents. Snow Hill forfeited the fifth singles match to senior Calais Rodriguez.
Senior Victoria Williams and sophomore Mallory Vara outscored their first doubles opponents 8-2.
The Eagles forfeited the second doubles match to senior Brittany Wangel and freshman Jessie Lupiwok.
Decatur Coach Jamie Greenwood thought the Seahawks played “OK.”
“Lack of practices has been our downfall this year,” he said.
Decatur has not been able to get much practice time in this season because of bad weather or playing matches.
“We haven’t had a lot of practice. It’s hard to work on things when you don’t have practice,” Greenwood said.
The Decatur boys’ team lost its fourth match this season by a score of 4-3.
“We didn’t play well at all,” Decatur Coach Steve Berquist said after Monday’s competition. “We were missing [junior] Christian Beres (sick) and everyone played up a spot … We’re being competitive, we’re just not pulling it out at the end.”
Deep Patel, a junior, edged out his fifth singles opponent 8-6.
Juniors Reed Watson and Jake Blosveren defeated their first doubles competition 8-5.
Snow Hill forfeited the second doubles match to freshman Frankie Nanna and junior Jose Roberts.
The boys played much better on Tuesday against Wi-Hi, winning 5-2.
“Everything seemed to come together for the guys,” Berquist said. “We had nice weather, it was a home match and we matched up well with Wi-Hi. This was our best match by far.”
Logan Romberger pulled out an 8-4 victory at first singles. Beres and Patel edged out their third and fifth singles players 8-6.
Watson and Blosveren logged an 8-6 victory at first doubles. Roberts and Nanna won 8-4 at second doubles.
“It seemed like we had more confidence and it showed in our performance,” Berquist said.
Iacona, Withers, Rolleston, Rodriguez and Mirza won their first through fifth singles matches, 8-2, 8-4, 8-3, 8-1 and 8-1, respectively.
Junior Mattie Friedman and first doubles partners, Wangel, tallied an 8-0 shutout. Wi-Hi forfeited the second double competition to Lupiwok and Vara.
“I thought we played OK,” Greenwood said. “We played down to their level a little bit. Since we haven’t been able to practice we tried to talk through everything.”
Decatur will play Wi-Hi again on Monday, at 4 p.m in Salisbury.
