Under the blazing heat of Wednesday evening, Chillicothe High School girls’ tennis team faced the brand new Sacred Heart Girls Tennis program just launched from Sedalia, Missouri. Because it is a new program, Sacred Heart was not able to field a full varsity line-up, playing just four varsity starters and one JV player who is transfer-ineligible. Their JV player was a high-level player from Smith-Cotton last year, so she held exhibition matches with Chillicothe’s top four players — Smith, Nagel, Bonderer, and Moore. Therefore, Chillicothe used its lower varsity starters and higher JV-ranked players to compete in the varsity matches for one night. Coach Chambers was pleased that so many of her athletes got a varsity match under their belts. After a few toasty hours and one great comeback on the top doubles court, the Lady Hornets won 9-0 including first-time varsity starts and wins for Merlot Cooper, Halle Gabrielson, Rylee Rempel, Suzannah Leifker, and Addison Fagan. A few more veteran players also helped with team wins from Isabel Nagel, London Douglas, and Jocelynn Albrecht.
Results were as follows:
Cooper & Gabrielson beat Diller & Perez 8-6
Rempel & Leifker beat Kamara & Jennings 8-0
Nagel beat Diller 7-0
Douglas beat Perez 8-2
Albrecht beat Kamara 8-1
Fagan beat Jennings 8-1
Exhibition matches were held between:
Lexy Smith & Lydia Bonderer versus Gretchen Beard & Isabel Nagel
Anya Moore & Gretchen Beard