The Senior Tennis teams, coached by Phy Ed teacher Mr. Shelley, went to compete for a chance to qualify for the ROPSSAA Finals on October 1st. Out of 10 teams, 1 team from the Girls Senior team qualified. The Junior team, which played just a week after, finished the tournament with no qualifications.
As another school year began, so did another year of sports. The year kicked off with a lot of fall sports, including tennis, which held tryouts in late September to prepare for ROPSSAA. “I thought they worked really hard,” said Shelley. “We had some new players, and we had three players qualify for the ROPSSAA championships this year.” When asked what he would change for a better chance at having more people qualify, he stated his concerns with the weather: “It rained on us a couple of times, so it cut a few practices short.”
Mr. Shelley also noticed how tennis, as a niche sport, can be hard for players with minimal or no prior experience to improve significantly within the short period of time they have until tryouts start. He advised students interested in playing to “play a little bit in the summertime leading up to the tennis season. It would help everybody out.” For the future, Shelley mentioned wanting to host a spring training session to give interested players some tips and things to work on over the summer. He also mentioned an interest in promoting the sport on social media platforms like Instagram to reach more interested players and incoming grade 9s.
To get a perspective of the on-court experience, Sunny, a player on the senior team, said he prepared by “practicing with his partner as well as taking time out of my own schedule to come to the school courts and practice with others.” When asked about his thoughts on his performance, he said, “The main goal was obviously to win, so I won’t say I was disappointed.” He noticed that each team he and his partner played had a different and unique playing style, but they were able to take them on and win after a few sets. Defining his play in one word, he chose “memorable,” as he was “realizing what I was doing wrong with my game, and then fixing it” to be able to win games “by a larger margin.”
Jatin Patil, a member of the Junior Team, commented that he wasn’t able to achieve the result he wanted. He explained how he was able to achieve easy wins but got too cocky and let his opponent come back and win. He mentioned how he didn’t agree with the refereeing style of the tournament, bringing up an incident where the opposing team did not play with sportsmanship and would call “obviously in balls” as out to improve their scores. Patil commented, saying, “If there were refs/linesmen, I would have won that game 100%.”
THE NORTH STAR 