Boys Tennis Season 2017

The biggest challenge for the boys tennis team this year has been not having enough players, or practices. With a rainy spring, the team had to wait to get their 2017 competition under way.

  With only 14 boys on the team, mainly sophomores and seniors, the seniors had to take a huge leadership role. Senior Florin Miron has been playing tennis for about 4 years and districts were awesome for Miron, even though he didn’t win first place, he still ended his last year of tennis successfully. “My dad got me into tennis,” Miron said. “I was never expecting to play, but when I started, I couldn’t stop.”  Miron was a 3 year state qualifier and ended up 4th place at districts.  

 Head coach Jim Gardenhire has been coaching tennis for 5 years. Over those years, the boys teams have had their ups and downs as the players come and go.  Gardenhire’s philosophy with tennis is the players will achieve as much as they put into their game.  This was a challenging season given the weather and lack of players to compete with.  

  “My favorite part about coaching is being able to hangout with the team and watching their skills improve on the court,” Gardenhire said. “The team is a fun group to coach, and they’re coachable”.

In addition to Miron, notable contributions came from sophomores Sam Zhou, John Ionescu and Seniors Max Lewis, Sam Fortune.

  Something Gardenhire said he could improve on as a coach is being more patient with the team. The team practices from Monday to Friday about 1 hour and 30 minutes for each practice.

“The players who do come out for tennis all show great improvement in their tennis game in terms of both knowledge and skills,” Gardenhire said.

“Being on the team has definitely made me better; I get a lot more experience in a competitive setting”, Sophomore Sam Zhou said.

  The team seemed most disappointed by lack of players. “I really enjoy the people I’m on the team with; however, it really disappoints me how few people we have” Zhou said. Even with miserable weather, the tennis team was great, and steadily improved throughout the season, and with only 1 win this season, the team hopes to improve and gain more players for next years 2018 season.