Erin Hunter delivers a serve during her win on the No. 1 singles court in Plymouth’s 5-0 sweep of Wawasee Tuesday evening. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)
SYRACUSE – It was a night for a little fine tuning on the tennis courts at Wawasee High School as Plymouth rolled into town to face the Lady Warriors in the final match before the Northern Lakes Conference tournament. Plymouth had little trouble continuing its conference success in a 5-0 sweep of Wawasee to move to 5-2 in the NLC.
The Lady Warriors were hard pressed to find any breaks on the court against the talented Plymouth squad. Nealy Thanasrivanitchai kept her match going the longest but would still suffer a 6-2, 6-1 loss to Lanae Singleton on the No. 2 singles court.
Jazlyn Gehlhausen and Kabrea Rostochak showed promise at two doubles against Plymouth’s Kendall Dreibelbis and McKenzie Scheetz with an entertaining match though it was the visitors that claimed a 6-0, 6-2 win. Charity Parker and Ashley Larson suffered a similar fate, losing 6-0, 6-1 at one doubles.
At three singles Chelsea Carolus took a 6-0, 6-0 defeat to Jess Stillson while Jada Antonides struggled to defend the No. 1 singles court, dropping a 6-1, 6-0 decision to Erin Hunter.
The loss drops Wawasee to 0-7 in the NLC and 2-10 overall. Tomorrow the ladies will travel to Plymouth for the opening rounds of the NLC tournament and head coach Shane Staley knows the road is not going to get much smoother as the season draws to a close.
“We’re still really inexperienced,” Staley began. “We’ve made a lot of strides this season but we knew it would be rough and we know the NLC tourney will be tough as well. We have some growing to do and we are looking forward to the future. We’re still a rebuilding project right now.”
While the immediate future for the Lady Warriors is not desirable, Staley sees the improvements his young team has made and looks forward to what should come next.
“We’ve seen a lot of our girls really improve from where we were at the beginning of the season,” said Staley. “At two doubles we’re really starting to see Jazlyn and Kabrea gel as a team. That’s good to see going into next season with Jazlyn as a junior and Kabrea being a freshman. We’ve seen the same kind of improvements with Charity Parker and Ashley Larson at one singles, but we lose Ashley to graduation.
“We have to continue to improve in the offseason with open courts and other workouts. We have a good group of freshmen coming in from the middle school and we’re starting to get this turned around the way we want it to.”
The Wawasee junior varsity falls to 1-9-1 with an 0-8 loss to Plymouth’s JV.
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