Gilroy
Tennis appears to be in full swing at both Christopher and Gilroy High Schools. Both schools have seen a healthy interest in the sport this fall and hopes for the season are high.
The Cougars finished No. 2 in the Monterey Bay League Pacific Division last year and have a strong core of upperclassmen returning. Expectations are high, especially for No. 1 singles player Emily Barhem and No. 2 Emily Collins.
“My goal is to have my best season yet,” senior Barhem said. “It’s exciting, it’s kind of the last things I’ll do — a send off for senior year. I’ve been No. 1 since freshman year so I’ve just got to keep it up.”
Collins, who took her sophomore year off, is returning to the squad with a new mindset, but the same level of talent. CHS coach Patrick McBearty said that her and Barhem may alternate as No. 1 and 2 given how they’re playing each day.
“Freshman year I was definitely more competitive,” Collins said. “This year I’m just here to have fun. Playing No. 1 would be awesome, playing No. 2 would be awesome, too. However it works out I’m fine with. I want to try to win as many matches as I can and hopefully get a scholarship next year.”
Liz Lavan and Adena Chen will round out the No. 3 and 4 spots for the Cougars, but the No. 5 and 6 slots are still up for grabs. McBearty said he’s confident in having a solid singles and doubles teams — which are still being determined — given the depth of talent to chose from.
While the talent is evident, there’s still much work to be done. With so many fresh faces to the squad this year, McBearty said his team still has much to learn.
“Strategy and double strategy is critical because the kids still don’t have positioning on the courts quite down,” the Cougars coach said. “They’re not quite sure what to do when the ball passes them or passes over them. … It’s mainly the service — if we could get the kids to 50 to 60 percent of the serves in they’ll do extremely well.”
The situation is similar at Gilroy High, where first year coach Scott Denham has undertaken the task of teaching the sport to his newcomers — and there’s a lot of them.
The Mustangs lost nearly half of last year’s team to graduation and we’re uncertain about what their future held. Just a few weeks ago, the numbers were low and the team was still without a coach. But
Gilroy’s situation turned around for the better, naming alumni Denham as coach and getting more players to turnout to practice than it knows what to do with.
“We were concerned if we were even going to have a team,” Denham said. “The first parent-student meeting filled the room up and every single day we’ve had a new player come out. We finally set the max at 17. We had a lot of first years, we only have six returning, so that makes 11 first years. …What’s great to see is that already within the first week I’ve seen great improvement out of all the girls. Some of them came in and could barely hold the racket and not even know how to hit it across, and now they’re actually impressing me — it’ll be fun to see where they are within a month.”
Denham, who played for four years at GHS, had the opportunity to review matches from last year and said the biggest thing his returners need to work on is their endurance. Junior singles player Jessica Martin agreed and has made that one of her goals for this season.
“A personal goal is that I’d like to just straight up win a match,” Martin said. “Last year I did a lot of overtime stuff. I’d like to be able to win and not have to tire myself out so much.”
The Cougars kick off their season Thursday at 4 p.m. at Pajaro Valley. The Mustangs’ season start today at 3:30 p.m. against rival San Benito, but they said they are most looking forward to facing their intown rivals at 4 p.m. Oct. 1 at CHS.
“Christopher is always big competition for us,” sophomore doubles player Nicole Holder said. “They’re a rival school, but it’s kind of weird because we have friends over there. You go and you compete and it’s like ‘Oh hey, I want to beat you but I’m going to be nice about it’.”
