As the team celebrated the Chillicothe senior tennis players on Senior Night 2025, the squad took on the Lady Spoofhounds of Maryville to face off in an important conference head-to-head. Both teams spent September tied for second in the MEC and also in team district seeding. However, this match also directly impacted the individual seeding at the upcoming conference tournament just one day later.
The top two doubles courts started off slowly as doubles #3 began in a tough back-and-forth match, but eventually, the #1 doubles pair of Lexy Smith & Lydia Bonderer mounted an 0-2 comeback once they started attacking the net and alleys. After a bit more back-and-forth, Smith & Bonderer took full charge of the match and finished it quickly in the last few games. This was a key doubles victory for the pair because it potentially aligns them to be placed as the #1 seed in MEC doubles brackets on October 1st as a preview of next week’s individual district competition. Unfortunately, even after stellar play by the remaining varsity players, the team dropped the other two doubles matches, positioning the team 1-2 going into Singles play.
Maryville proved to be backboards on every court in their singles play. Even after incredibly long and grueling points, the Lady Hornets struggled to best the Spoofhounds at deep rallies. Eventually, Smith, Bonderer, Gatson, and Mathews dropped the top four singles matches. On the last two courts, Chillicothe’s #5 Anya Moore and #6 Isabel Nagel battled through the closest matches of the night to help the team grab two final team points in singles wins. This ended the night with a 3-6 team score, positioning CHS 3rd in the MEC, and moving the team to 8-10 on the season.
Results were as follows:
#1 Doubles — Smith & Bonderer won 8-4 over Kora Grow & Kori Quinlin
#2 Doubles — Gatson & Mathews lost 5-8 to Lindsey Deering & Vivian Kain
#3 Doubles — Moore & Nagel lost 5-8 to Lacy Gallagher & Maddison Hennegin
#1 Singles — Smith lost 4-8 to Grow
#2 Singles — Bonderer lost 4-8 to Quinlin
#3 Singles — Gatson lost 2-8 to Deering
#4 Singles — Mathews lost 4-8 to Kain
#5 Singles — Moore won 8-8 (tiebreak 7-3) over Gallagher
#6 Singles — Nagel won 9-7 over Hennegin
JV Results were as follows:
Helena England & Arisha Shafiq lost 2-6 to a Maryville pair
Rylee Rempel & Mackenzie Bagley won 4-1 over a Maryville pair
Halle Gabrielson & Jocelynn Albrecht won 4-2 over a Maryville pair
Addison Fagan & Emily Ford lost 0-4 to a Maryville pair
Suzannah Leifker & Bently Peery lost 0-4 to a Maryville pair
Makaila Kennedy & Dayahna White lost 0-4 to a Maryville pair
Leighton Kelly won 5-3 over Abigail Evans