NorthWood Tennis: A Lesson In Endurance
NAPPANEE – It was already going to be a long night given the circumstances. A pair of well-matched girls tennis teams from Concord and NorthWood made for an early test of endurance among a slew of three-set marathons.
As the sun set on an already brisk and chilly NorthWood tennis complex, the Panthers had claimed a well-deserved 4-1 victory over the Minutemen.
Switching the match location from Concord to NorthWood Thursday afternoon due to waterlogged courts in Dunlap, the preset start time of 5 p.m. became more of a 5:40 p.m. start after court warmups. Tack on three of the five varsity courts that went three sets, and some JV courts doing the same, and fans who didn’t have blankets and/or a space heater found themselves huddled in the auxiliary gym garage to ride out the finishes.
Both the No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles courts came off quickly, relatively speaking to the rest of the night. Alana Brubaker of Concord looked sharp on the baseline, moving around Alex Jesse with control in a 6-3, 6-1 final. The doubles match went to NorthWood, where the smart play of Kennedy Wiens at the net and the consistent stroke of Jama Rice made for a 6-3, 6-3 win against Keegan Thursby and Emma Westlake.
But then, things slowed down to a crawl as the matchups ratcheted up, along with a very stiff west to east crosswind.
Over an hour later, Hannah Walter and Maya Klopfenstein were toe-to-toe on the No. 3 singles court heading to a third set. Neither player seemed to gain any momentum, both making solid winners after long rallies, then hitting the next shot into the net. Klopfenstein broke Walter’s serve in the first set, taking a 7-5 result, only for Walter to return favor with a break of her own in the second set for a 6-3 winner. Going through the third, Walter found herself up 4-3 but barely, then digging deep to come out with a 6-4 winner for the Panthers.
That win seemed to settle things down a little for the other two courts, which wrapped up shortly thereafter.
“Two doubles and two singles started playing that third set around the same time, and Hannah was already playing,” noted NorthWood head coach Tiffiny Schwartz. “Hannah was up a little bit, and we knew it was going to be close. We needed two of those three courts. Who was going to pull it out. Our energy was positive in that third set for our courts, which is a great sign to see on a night like this.”
Reegan Miller at No. 2 for NorthWood was in a similar but flipped boat to that of the three singles court. Miller won the first set 7-6 (6-4) against Regan Landis, only for Landis to rally back with a 6-4 second set fueled by solid returns on Miller’s volleys. Miller seemed to find another gear in the third set, taking a 3-0 lead in the third set and hanging on for a 6-3 winner.
Miller’s match was icing given the No. 2 doubles card had NorthWood take the team win on a 7-6 (9-7), 5-7, 6-3 score for Betsy Nunemaker and Amanda Rhoade over Allison Murphy and Meaghan Godzisz. In what had seemingly no advantage for either side of the net, some smart shots by Nunemaker in the tiebreaker as well as patience at the net gave NorthWood the slight edge.
“Last year we went 3-2 with them and we knew it was going to be close again,” Schwartz said. “They graduated a couple of their top players, and we did, too, losing our number one singles player. We knew this was going to be a tough match, and be prepared because it might be a long night. If anything, this shows our conditioning is going to use, and that was a big key in us taking a couple of the courts.”
To draw out the night even further, JV courts were playing well past 8:30 under the lights. Each of the one singles and one doubles matches both went three sets, with NorthWood’s Katie Troyer beating Camille Lozier 6-4, 6-7 (8-6), 6-4 and Concord’s duo of Chloe O’Dell and Aubrey Hanes winning 3-6, 7-5, 6-0 over Natalie Graber and Ashlyn Romersberger.
In all, Concord won 10 of the 13 JV matches.
NorthWood moves to 3-0 overall and 1-0 in the Northern Lakes Conference and will prep for Saturday’s New Prairie Tournament.