After a little over a month of meets, girls’ regular season of tennis comes to end. Practices began the week of spring break for the Spartans and their first JV invite was on March 31 at Clinton. The following Tuesday, the dual meets began at North Scott. The girls have remained undefeated all season with dual meets but tied with Waterloo Columbus at the varsity Clinton invite. Throughout the season the girls have faced challenges on and off the court but are hopeful going into postseason matches.
Last year Hannah Humes, number two on the team, Emily Nutt, three on the team, and Abi Paravasthuramesh, number six on the team, were all seniors. This left three spots on varsity to be filled. After days of brackets and observing the team, varsity coach Eric Crawford released the new ladder. This year’s varsity lineup consisted of returning varsity members Lily Feldman as the number one player, followed by Roshni Penmatcha at two and Kayla Nutt at three. From there, returning senior Sophie Picchiotti was placed at four and sophomore Aabha Joshi landed at five on the team. As for number six, Ukrainian foreign exchange student Amanda Drobot filled the spot. “In all of my years as a tennis coach, I have never had a foreign exchange student be on varsity,” Crawford said.
The first dual meet of the season was supposed to be against North Scott, but due to harsh wind conditions and storms rolling in, the meet was postponed. Mother nature was not kind to the Spartans at the beginning of the season. Between snow, rain and wind, the team members were hardly able to practice outside. There were a few cases where the girls had not practiced in five days due to weather conditions before playing in a meet.
But the Spartans were determined and would not let anything get in their way. On April 10, the girls played against Assumption at home. where they had multiple long matches. Kayla Nutt, a sophomore, lost her number three singles match to Assumption, but she was able to pull through in her doubles match. The following Thursday the varsity girls were able to pull out a 9-0 win against Iowa City High, as last year they dropped a match to them in doubles.
At Clinton on April 17, more long matches were played as temperatures dropped and the night went on. The Spartans had a tough meet that night losing more games than usual. This resulted in a number three doubles loss where Drobot and teammate Ramya Subramaniam fell in a super tiebreaker. The Spartans left this meet with their second 8-1 score of the season.
On April 24, the girls played at Bettendorf. Last year, 7-2 was the final score of the match so the team was driven to win more this year and that they did. The Spartan girls won 9-0 against the Bulldogs. More 9-0 wins came against North Scott, Muscatine, Davenport North and Davenport West. The girl’s will play their last dual meet for the season against Davenport Central on Tuesday.
This past Thursday was the girls’ senior night as they played against Davenport West. Juniors Julia Hillman and Emma Tews put on the night for seniors with help from the team moms. Seniors were honored in between varsity singles and doubles matches as Hillman read their names and pictures were taken. “Senior night was a lot of fun,” senior and teammate Josie Sack said. “It was super sweet to see the juniors lead that and it just shows how special our team is as a whole.”
As regular season comes to end for these lady Spartans, meets are just picking up. The road to state will continue May 7 at MAC at North Scott beginning at 9:00 a.m.
