On Wednesday evening, the Lady Hornets of Chillicothe traveled to Savannah for the tennis district championship team dual. Six weeks ago, when the team last dueled, CHS lost 1-8, but as the team has progressed tremendously, this week proved a much closer night. In doubles, Chillicothe’s #2 and #3 pairs lost fairly quickly, but the #1 pair of Lexy Smith & Lydia Bonderer battled for twice as long, eventually winning their court. This set the team up 1-2 overall, headed into singles play.
Summer Gatson and Anya Moore both played long rallies and lots of deuce games on courts #3 and #5, but they were not able to tackle Savannah’s extreme consistency. That moved the team score to 1-4, almost ending the night, and making the score look very lopsided. However, #2 Bonderer played the fastest, most dominant singles’ match of her entire season to keep the team in the hunt. On the end court, playing under a very large and loud Savannah crowd, freshman #6 Isabel Nagel won a quick first set but lost by quite a bit in her second set with the momentum in Savannah’s court going into the championship tiebreak in lieu of a third set. However, Nagel got really calm during her five-minute break and went out to dominate the tiebreak, never getting down again. This moved the team score back to a reasonable 3-4 overall. The last two matches on court for the night were senior Rian Mathews at #3 and sophomore Smith at #1. Neither matches were within reach by that point, though, as both Chillicothe athletes were down a set and losing in their second sets. Every game they played went to deuce, but they were unable to close those games. Eventually, the #3 court finished with a loss before the #1s could wrap-up, so with the score at 3-5, the team dual was called in favor of Savannah. Coach Chambers was quoted as saying, “If you’ve gotta lose, you want to lose to the best while playing your best, and that’s exactly what our girls did tonight. To make it such a closer match than it was in early September is a testament to our athlete’s growth and grit.” The Savannah coach Kelly Jones was even overheard telling Coach Chambers, “Your girls have gotten so much better compared to last month,” which is all a coach can ask of her athletes in post-season play.
Results were as follows:
#1 Doubles — Smith & Bonderer won 8-4 over Fischer & Steele
#2 Doubles — Gatson & Mathews lost 0-8 to Alexander & Hare
#3 Doubles — Moore & Nagel lost 1-8 to Jones & Forney
#1 Singles — Smith was down 1-6, 0-5 to Fischer, but the match was unfinished
#2 Singles — Bonderer won 6-1, 6-0 over Alexander
#3 Singles — Gatson lost 0-6, 1-6 to Hare
#4 Singles — Mathews lost 1-6, 2-6 to Steele
#5 Singles — Moore lost 1-6, 0-6 to Jones
#6 Singles — Nagel won 6-2, 2-6, 10-4 to Bodenhausen