With the spring sports season right around the corner, some students will pick up their tennis racket for this year’s season. After graduating eight seniors, the underclassmen will look to fill roles left open and aim to repeat success of past years.

Last year the Eagles went undefeated in league and once again advanced to the Valley Championship tournament. They fell short to Sierra Pacific HS in the semi-final for the second consecutive year.

Third-year assistant head coach Daniel Jessing holds high hopes for this year’s squad despite losing many players.

“First and foremost, I just love tennis. But more than that, I love seeing kids develop into competitive tennis players,” Jessing said. “The goal is always to first teach the fundamentals of the game but then to help them to progress into an athlete that competes at a very high level.  The goal never changes: for this season, we want to go out and win a league championship and compete for a Valley Championship. Last year’s team set the bar pretty high by going undefeated in league and making it to the semifinals in the playoffs.  We think we have a team this year that can top that.”

First-year high school player Landon Bell, ‘21, has never played tennis before but heard about the sport from his brother, Braden Bell, ’20.

“This is my first year playing tennis,” Bell said. “I joined tennis because my brother told me it was fun and it was an enjoyable sport. After playing for a while, serving has been my favorite part of tennis. I like hitting the ball as hard as I can and try to get it into the serving square. My goal for this season is to improve my tennis skill and become better than my brother.”

Three-year varsity player Reese Brown, ‘19, first started playing tennis because his history teacher asked him to fill in for someone during their first match.

“I joined tennis my freshman year because (Rob) Foshee asked me to play since the team needed one more player,” Brown said. “My favorite part about tennis is that it is you against your opponents and how you can’t blame anyone but yourself. For this season I want to be number one on our team and as for the season, I want to go deeper into the playoff and win Valley.”

The team practices Monday – Friday from 3:30 – 5:15 p.m. Contact head coach Robert Foshee or Daniel Jessing if you are interested. The first match is at home against McLane HS at 4 p.m., Feb. 20.

For more about sports, read Winter sports senior night and Tennis team honors 8 players on senior night. 

John Monke can be reached via Twitter and via email.