Co-Captains Mac Katkavich ’21 and Hudson Elegant ’21, Alex Zhu ’23, Jeremy Liao ’24, and Kian Burt ’24 each came up victorious in their singles matches as Andover Boys Tennis defeated Worcester Academy 6-1 inside the Snyder Center last Friday. The team’s record now stands at 3-0. Coming off of two consecutive wins, the team looked to maintain consistency and fine-tune specific technical aspects of its game before its match against Worcester, according to Co-Captain Aidan Burt ’21. Burt said, “Leading up to the match, the past week, our team had been practicing a lot of consistency and rally tolerance and being able to work the point, construct the point, and create opportunities for ourselves to be aggressive which is one thing the team is good at. And I think an area where we did excel was [that] we were able to [outlast] a lot of the guys that we were playing against and then create those opportunities for ourselves to attack.” Defeating Worcester in nearly every match, a driving factor in the team’s success was the leadership shown from Burt, according to Alex Zhu ’23, “Definitely the teamwork [was a key factor in our victory]. Aidan Burt was super selfless because he let Mac play number-one singles because his parents came to watch. So that sense of selflessness definitely [brought] us together.” The team was forced to move inside the Snyder Center for its match as windy conditions proved to be unfit for play last Friday. According to Burt, the familiarity of playing in Snyder gave the team an advantage throughout its matches. “I think that playing inside Snyder was definitely the right choice. It was very windy and a lot of the benches were falling over and the balls were flying, so it would have been pretty tough to compete outside during then. But playing inside Snyder always I think gives us a slight advantage since we’re used to practicing there. The courts are multi-purpose, so the surface, compared to outside, it’s a little bit slower. But being indoors, you get a lot of pop. As a team, we tend to hit a bit flatter inside, so the ball travels a lot quicker than outside. But definitely, the ball bounces up a little bit, it gives attacking tennis an advantage since we have a bit more time to set up compared to outside. And I think that playing inside conditions are always ideal, they’re always as best as they can be. There’s no wind, there’s no sun, there’s no precipitation, and I think we were able to use that to our advantage and get a really good rhythm right from the start, and I think that definitely helped us get the win last weekend.” Ahead of its next game against Pingree, the team looks to continue refining its play in practice with a focus on starting off strong in its matches. “Looking ahead against Pingree, I think this week, we want to keep working on the same things on staying consistent, working on constructing points, rally tolerance, and then creating those opportunities to attack. All those things will help us get a good start against Pingree and then carry momentum like we always do. So far, we’ve been able to do that against every team we play, so it’s definitely a really positive start to the season, and I’m really looking forward to this weekend.” Andover will look to extend its winning streak at home against Pingree on Friday.
