Varsity tennis attended regionals, Prepared, ready to win

 The varsity tennis team has been playing all during the regular season to lead up to the UCBAC Divisionals. The tournament was held on May 5 and 9, 2022.

      Divisionals were held at Harford Community where the team played Bel Air, C. Milton Wright, Fallston, Harford Technical, North East, and Patterson Mill High Schools.

      The way that the process of who the players played was based on their regular season scores, and then it was a random draw of who the team played.

     The players on the team have been playing in matches during the regular season, ending in a 5-7 record. Divisonials is a part of postseason play, along with regionals.

      Many players including senior Megan Mannlein, senior Solomon Brundidge, senior Andrew Clayton, junior Jeremy Webb, freshman Mia Sbodio, and freshman Emma Clayton, all made it past the first round of play and into the second, and some third round of play.

      Sophomore, Stella Manns played with senior Jonathan (Jonny) Roth as a mixed doubles partner, where they were seeded third. They played the mixed doubles team from Patterson Mill.

      Stella and Jonny have been working together as a team these last couple of regular season matches, “so we can prepare ourselves for divisionals, Manns says.

      Sophomore double girls partner, Cara Dyke played the girls doubles team from C. Milton Wright. Dyke states, “I have really improved on my skills” and to help her do well while playing she has to “not get in [her] head and stay confident.”

      As the players have practiced, they have noticed the things that they really need to work on. Manns says that she needed to work on her serves, because she needed to “make sure they go inside the box and not outside of the box.”

      Dyke says she had “practiced [her] net skills and made sure [her] backhand is ready” for gameplay. Mannlein played girls singles, commenting that she has done “footwork” and “getting weaknesses covered up and just trying to focus on who we can beat and what we can work on.”

     Manns states that she was excited to “try to win and I look forward to pushing myself.” Dyke says that she is looking forward to “having fun and being confident.”

     Mannlein comments, “[the season] has been very successful; [the team has] had a lot of good wins and we have been doing really well as a team,” and she is “looking forward to being with the team again as the season is ending.”