Warriors conquer Blair tennis

Blazer tennis courts, Sept. 28—

The girls' tennis team lost, 2-5, against the Sherwood Warriors in a key match of the season. While the doubles teams showed improvements over previous matches, crucial mistakes kept the singles players from a victory.

The singles matches ended first, each of the Blazers losing to her opponent. First singles Leslie Chen felt that errors in her performance cost her many points. "I hit a lot of shots out and wide that I shouldn't have," Chen said.

Alternate Song-Binh Ngo, who played in place of fourth singles Camila Arias, agreed that major mistakes led to her 6-0, 6-0 defeat. "The girl that I was playing had very good overheads that I had trouble returning," Ngo said. "My strokes and positioning could definitely be improved."

In contrast, the doubles teams felt they did well in their matches, though not without a struggle. Both first and second doubles won the first set but had to have a tiebreaker in the second, eventually winning by a narrow margin. Though they won the game, junior Therese Nkeng, an alternate subbing as second doubles, felt that their second set was full of ups and downs. "In the beginning, we kept hitting the ball directly towards [our opponents], but we pulled it together and eventually played the way we were supposed to," Nkeng said.

The third doubles team also had a difficult time fighting off the Warriors resulting in a loss. Despite winning the first set, the third doubles team lost the second and the tiebreaker. Still, first doubles Christine Jean felt that overall the doubles teams have improved over previous games, especially her team when it came to their communication and working as partners.

Despite these improvements, the loss brought questioning of the Blazer's status in Division I in the 2013 season. Still, Chen is positive about the future of the team. "Other schools in the division have good records, but I still think we're a really good team,” she said. "We have room to improve but if we keep working hard, we'll definitely at the very least get back into Division I after next year."

The girl's tennis team will play their next home game against Springbrook on October 11 at 3:30 p.m.