Park’s boys tennis team fought through the windy conditions and faced off against Southwest in one of their first matches of the year April 17. Due to a lack of players on the other team, only five matches were played. Even with this game change, Park ultimately came out victorious with a win 5-1.
Head coach Gregory Holmbeck said the harsh wind conditions benefit the team in the long run. According to him, they create more versatile tennis players for future games with such conditions.
“It’s great to get matches like this under our belts,” Holmbeck said. “It’s really important that we play in these kinds of matches, and that we figure out what we have to do.”
According to junior Crew Lund, the wind made it harder to serve the ball, but he still got the job done in the long run, even though it was more difficult.
“It was windy, so it’s obviously hard to get serves in, but I served pretty well even under this condition,” Lund said.
Junior Isaac Joseph said the wind threw him off his game a bit, but his dedication to tennis and hard work ethic helped him secure his victory.
“Yeah the wind threw me off a little bit. It definitely created major difficulties but I still pushed through.,” Joseph said.
Holmbeck said he hopes his team improves their mental resilience, confidence and enhancement of game playing.
“Obviously, our mental toughness and our confidence, along with just improving our games overall (is what we want to work on),” Holmbeck said.
Lund said he hopes to improve in his next match by playing with more confidence and aggression and dominating more in the future.
“Playing with more confidence and hitting harder ground strokes, not just pushing it (is what we need to do),” Lund said. “Which is what I did, and it made the match closer than it should have been.”
Joseph said one way he hopes to improve for upcoming matches is to improve his ball-hitting and staying aggressive.
“It would help me perform better in matches if I improved on hitting the ball better and being way more aggressive in-game,” Joseph said.
Holmbeck said he looks forward to competitive matches this season and enhancing as a team for future matches.
“I look forward to close matches, good matches with good teams and especially just continuing to improve so that we play our best at the end of the season,” Holmbeck.
Lund said as the season progressed, he wanted to get closer to his teammates and enjoy tennis as a whole.
“I’m looking forward to building good bonds with my teammates, having fun and playing,” Lund said. “Overall just having a fun and improving season as it goes on.”
Park’s next varsity tennis match is against Benilde at 4:15 p.m. on Apr 18 at Park’s Tennis Courts.
