Spring is a beautiful time of the year. The flowers are budding, the birds are singing, and the sun is finally coming out from behind the cloudy skies. Amidst this season of new beginnings lies a new start for dozens of high school students as they jump into spring sports.

One sport that begins right at this time of year is Womens’ Tennis. Every spring, high school girls step out onto the court, sometimes for the first time in months, and begin the arduous process of getting back into the game.

Rachel Bull,10, has high expectations for the season this year. “I really think that we are going to get better this year than last year,” she said. Bull has been playing tennis for a little over a year and highly enjoys the sport.

As the girls are preparing to begin the tryouts, the coaches have not wasted any time in prepping times for the first matches of the season. They will begin the season at DCC on March 7 with the Varsity girls playing a home game and the JV girls at an away game.

Tennis matches are very unique compared to other sports. Tennis is a very individual game, with matches played either in singles (one on one) or in doubles (two on two) format. They are divided into sets, which are won by best of two out of three, in which at least six games of a minimum of four points each are played. A set also has to be won by a lead of two points, so sets can theoretically be played indefinitely until one player wins two games in a row. Because of this rule, matches can take several hours to be completed, making it a sport that requires incredible patience and stamina.  

Girls’ Tennis in the spring usually has a rep for getting a bit of a snowy start. In previous years, tryouts have often been snowed out, sometimes being pushed back by several weeks, due to huge amounts of snow that have often been received. “The snow is kind of hard to work with, especially when they have to cancel practice, but we can usually get around it,” Bull said. Many times during practice, the girls switch out the balls and rackets for snow shovels and get to work.

Bull believes that the shoveling is hard work– sometimes even becoming a workout. It usually takes several hours to clear the courts completely, and even then, the pools of water left behind from the melted snow and ice make it impossible to actually play. But even then, the snow poses some opportunities for the girls.

“You get to come closer as a team,” Bull said. When the team comes together to get some hard work done, it usually ends with laughing and even some snowball fights on occasion.”

The school doesn’t usually offer pre-season workouts for tennis as it does for many of the other sports, so a lot of the time, it is left up to the girls to get practicing of their own volition. “I practice after school a lot,” Bull said. “I usually practice at my serves and my forehand and backhands.”
Tennis tryouts will take place starting on Monday, February 27. Tryouts usually last around a week to determine varsity players and their positions. Girls are stepping up to this challenge and getting ready to swing into spring.