The Spirit Lake-Okoboji Girls Tennis team is coming off a
pair of wins, Saturday, where they beat both Spencer and Storm Lake,
5-0, in Round 1 and 2 of Regionals.
Rachel Westergaard, Olivia Rohlk, Natalie Delaney, Heather
Sorenson, and Hannah Schoning were all singles winners for the Indians.
O’Hara says it was a great day
That’s Spirit Lake-Okoboji Coach Bob O’Hara, whose team will
compete in their Regional Individual Tennis Meet on Thursday.
The Spirit Lake-Okoboji boys downed Cherokee, 5-1,
Saturday. Brandon Stoll, Andrew Ites,
Trystan Wiedow, Michael O’Brien and Ryley Smith were all singles winners for
the Indians.
Comments from Coach Dan Taylor:
“The weather
conditions for our preliminary substate match were not ideal, but the guys
didn’t let it bother them. They’ve
played in cold and windy conditions several times this year, and they showed
their toughness and desire in the way they came out firing from the first
points of their matches even though the conditions were not what they
prefer. All of our players got off to
quick starts and early leads, and we had very comfortable victories at #1,#3
and #6. Andrew, CJ and Michael had
closer matches, and it was great that we were able to win two of those three,
so that the meet was decided before getting into the doubles matches. They all played very well at the districts
the day before, and even though we got home late, and Brandon, Andrew and
Trystan all played 4 full two-out-of-three set matches on Friday, the guys
continued to play at a high level on Saturday, competing confidently and
playing aggressively. The guys have
really hit their stride, and I’m looking forward to having a full week of
practice with them before we head to Ft. Dodge on Saturday to take on St.
Edmunds for the opportunity to go to the State Team Tournament. There are only 4 teams that qualify to go to
State in boys tennis, unlike every other team sport where 8 teams qualify per
class, so to make it even to the substate finals shows that, just like last
season, we have a very strong team. And
having this week of practice should be a real benefit, as we have hardly had
even five practices outdoors all season due to our wild spring weather. As long as the weather holds up this week we
will have a chance to work on a few areas of improvement, and can fine tune
some parts of their strokes and strategies that will help us compete against a
tough St. Eds team that defeated us in the substate final last year, and ended
up finishing in 2nd place in the State Tournament last year. They are a very good team, but we are
too. We had some close sets and matches
with them when we played last year, so I’m excited to see what the guys can do
against them this time. A lot of our
guys played some year round the past 12 months, and have improved quite a bit
from last season, so I am looking forward to some good, competitive hard fought
matches.”
