After a whirlwind of transportation shifts, the CHS varsity tennis team traveled to Maryville and back to St. Joe in order to avoid the bad storms and still get their mandatory conference match-up played. In the end, they rented indoor courts in St. Joe to play for three hours in a tight, tough dual. The night started strong for Chillicothe with #1 Doubles Lexy Smith and Lydia Bonderer winning resoundingly over one of their predicted main competitions for this season. They put that rumor to bed, so the team started up 1-0. However, the other two doubles courts of Isabel Nagel and Anya Moore as well as Jocelynn Albrecht and Halle Gabrielson struggled to get in a groove and eventually dropped both matches, moving the team score to 1-2.
Then, play moved to singles where Chillicothe witnessed some highlight matches of the season. First, Lydia Bonderer dominated at #3 singles and tied the team score up. Then, Jocelynn Albrecht played her best singles match of the entire year going back and forth with Maryville’s #6 until finally pulling out a big team win, moving the team one step closer to the overall win. And after more than an hour in the #2 singles match, where Isabel Nagel played well over 50 duece points to decide a winner with some of the longest rallies of her career for every single point, she pulled out her win, too, putting the Lady Hornets up 4-2 with three matches left to play.
However, #1 singles player Smith had to face the conference champion and returning state qualifier Quinlin in her head-to-head. Smith played the best singles match of her high school career, but could not upset the favored Spoofhound, which put the match at 4-3 for Chillicothe. Then, London Douglas fought well in her #5 singles spot but could not pull out that win either, which tied up the dual for each team. The final match of the night saw senior Anya Moore face Gallagher in a very sharp hitting battle for a #4 singles match. Moore fought hard but came up just short, so the night ended 4-5 in Maryville’s favor. Chillicothe lady netters move to 7-3 on the season and 3-2 in MEC play. Chillicothe brought along two subs, freshmen Merlot Cooper and Camble Yuille, who got to play one JV match against Maryville upperclassmen. The newbies started down 1-5 at one point, playing in their first-ever Pro8 together, but they adjusted well and fought back, eventually just barely losing 6-8. Coach Chambers was excited that her new, young, promising players also got that great experience on the night. Results were as follows:
Doubles
#1 — Smith & Bonderer beat Deering & Kain 8-2
#2 — Nagel & Moore lost to Quinlin & Chloupek 3-8
#3 — Albrecht & Gabrielson lost to Gallagher & Baker 3-8
JV — Cooper & Yuille lost to Blackford & Pedersen 6-8
Singles
#1 Smith lost to Quinlin 5-8
#2 Nagel beat Deering 8-6
#3 Bonderer beat Kain 8-2
#4 Moore lost to Gallagher 5-8
#5 Douglas lost to Chloupek 4-8
#6 Albrecht beat Johnson 8-5