After a rain postponement against the Benton Lady Cardinals last week, the Chillicothe girls tennis team headed to St. Joseph on Monday night to play two back-to-back dual meets against both Benton at 1:30 PM and LeBlond at 4:00 PM. It was a sweltering hot day with no shade in sight on the Noyes Tennis Courts. Chillicothe started off incredibly strong by taking down Benton 9-0 with a clean sweep through the varsity matches, including a tough tiebreak win for senior Trixie Leppin in #5 singles. Unfortunately, Leppin went down to a knee injury right after that match, forcing freshman Isabel Nagel to step in as a last-minute sub in the next key MEC dual.
After already playing two pro-8s matches under the glaring sun, the Lady Hornets had to step up and play a tougher conference foe: the Lady Eagles of LeBlond. Each court started slowly in doubles after resting for 30 minutes between the duals. However, after a little loud encouragement from their coaches, every court really turned the intensity up and took charge of each court in doubles. The team eventually took all three doubles matches handily, which really helped the team going into singles already up 3-0. It was easy to tell that everyone was moving more slowly throughout the singles matches simply due to the heat. First, freshman Nagel stepped up to clinch her singles match dominantly, moving the team one step closer to the important team win. Then, after over an hour of singles play alone junior Anya Moore won a very back-and-forth singles match almost simultaneously to senior Rian Mathews winning her singles match as well. That moved the team to 6-0 on the night. The top three singles matches proved a little too tough for the lady hornets to close, but the team confidently finished 6-3 with the team win. This moves them into a tie for second place in the MEC currently and brings their season record to 6-9 overall, along with some key wins for conference seeding next week.
Results were as follows:
Chillicothe vs Benton
#1 Doubles — Lexy Smith & Lydia Bonderer won 8-2 over Alyssa Martinez & Gina Leshy
#2 Doubles — Summer Gatson & Rian Mathews won 8-1 over Karmen Philips & Raven Miller-Prag
#3 Doubles — Trixie Leppin & Anya Moore won 8-2 over Josephina Nold & Gabriella Nold
#1 Singles — Smith won 8-2 over Martinez
#2 Singles — Bonderer won 8-1 over Leshy
#3 Singles — Gatson won 8-0 over Phillips
#4 Singles — Mathews won 8-2 over Miller-Prag
#5 Singles — Leppin won 8-8 (tiebreak 7-5) over J. Nold
#6 Singles — Moore won 8-4 over G. Nold
JV Results were as follows:
Helena England & Arisha Shafiq lost 3-6 to Alex Penland & Sophia Nold
Leighton Kelly & Rylee Rempel won 6-1 over Penland & S. Nold
Leighton Kelly & Mackenzie Bagley 6-3 over Nold & Nold
Nagel won 6-0 over Penland
England & Rempel won 6-0 over Maria Montero & Ziva Hunt
Kelly & Bagley won 6-0 over Montero & Hunt