Girls Tennis Sports

Girls Tennis Rebounds From a Slow Start, Wins 6-3 Against Deerfield

Andover Girls Tennis prides itself on its comeback against Deerfield and hopes to perform equally as well
throughout the rest of the season.

Despite losing two of its three starting doubles matches, Andover Girls Tennis rebounded and won five of its six singles matches, earning its first win of the season. Andover’s record now stands at 1-0. 

 

According to Head Coach Deborah Chase, most girls on the team excelled in singles and struggled in doubles due to more competitive experience playing singles.

 

All of the girls have much more experience in singles because that’s what they play in tournaments. We will work hard throughout the season on improving our doubles, and that then helps us for the singles, so I think that by the end of the season, doubles is going to be second to none because of the type of work that we do throughout the season,” said Chase. 

 

Despite falling down early after doubles, the team was never flustered because of their faith in one another, according to Captain Reimi Kusaka ’21.

 

Kusaka said, “We knew that even if we lost the first round of doubles, the game was far from over. I believe that the faith we had in each other gave us the confidence to win.”

 

According to Coach Chase, the losses in doubles served as a source of motivation heading into the singles matches.

 

My thoughts were that I knew we had a lot of work to do, I knew it was a good team, but I also knew that we were going to use the loss as motivation to start really strong in singles which we did, we actually won the first set in every match, so in all six of them, and I knew that the girls felt good and warmed-up after having played. Even though they lost, nobody played really poorly, so I saw it as, ‘okay you got warmed-up, now the real work is going to begin,’” said Chase. 

 

Despite being nervous heading into her first competitive matches at Andover, Kareena Dua ’23 found that it was helpful to play in a familiar environment with friends and teachers as spectators.

 

“It was scary, obviously, and I was really nervous, but I think it was also motivating to see all my friends come by and watch, especially where the tennis courts are. I feel like people have to walk by and my teachers watched some points which was really cool,” said Dua. 

 

Andover looks to secure another win against Worcester this Friday. T