The girls tennis team had a dominating victory against the Paint Branch Panthers last Thursday. It was the seniors’ last match and they determined to end it on a good note. Coach Fahrner predicted that the score would be “7-0” saying, “We’re division one. They’re division three.” Sure enough, Coach Fahrner’s prediction came true. The match featured a couple of intense matches as every player managed to win her match.

The first match to finish was the third doubles match which resulted in RM’s first win of the day. “I think I played with consistency and power so it turned out well,” said third doubles freshman Katie Kolodner. She along with her partner senior Grace Lee defeated their opponents 6-0 6-1 without any trouble.

From there on out, first singles junior Ana Maria Escudero easily defeated her opponent 6-0 6-0, second singles junior Piper Feldman also won 6-0 6-0, team co-captain senior Michelle Dubovitsky won her match 6-0 6-2 as third singles, and second doubles players senior Varsha Ramachadran and senior Grace Song won their match 6-2 6-4.

The next two matches were by far the most intense. The first doubles players junior Isabelle Zhou and sophomore Shefei Jiang started off the match with the score in their favor, leading 3-0. However, from there the Panthers started to improve their game. They started taking over the net and they caught up to the pair in the sixth game tying it 6-6. The girls began to recover and easily won the tiebreaker.

In the second set, the girls started off with a 3-0 lead giving them more confidence. They started hitting their shots more aggressively at the net player making it difficult for the Panthers to dominate play. The pair quickly extended their win to 5-0 and a game later, they had won the grueling match.

When asked about how she thought of their performance, Zhou responded by saying “The second set was great, the first set not so much.” She explained that they started to “gain confidence” with Jiang adding that they “started to play more aggressively.”

An alternate player, senior Shreya Sudhir, playing as the fourth singles had the longest match out of all. Despite losing the first set 6-3, Sudhir refused to give up and resurged in the second set which ended in her winning 6-4. What followed was a tiebreaker that she won 7-2. It was an amazing victory and when she finished, her whole team was cheering. Sudhir said that she “really stepped up her game this time because it was going to be her last match.”

The girls finished off their season third in the entire county, making it one of the best seasons they’ve had.

Featured photo by Maddie Franke.