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Nevada tennis takes control of conference
By Joe Warren
Nevada Daily Mail
The 2005 Southwest Conference girls tennis favorite is now the Nevada Lady Tigers.
After defeating Neosho 6-3 at Nevada High School Thursday afternoon, the Lady Tigers took control of the conference race.
"This is a big one," Nevada head coach Dennis Pendrak said moments after Nevada swept Neosho in three doubles matches to take the team victory. "Up and down the line we had clutch players."
Pendrak commented that every player on the team contributed to the victory.
"What I was really happy about is each of the girls could honestly say, 'If it wasn't for me...'" Pendrak said. "I know tennis is an individual sport, but since we do have team scores, that's important also."
Pendrak said the team had worked almost exclusively on their doubles play in practice the day before.
"The girls had come to me and asked for more work in doubles, so that's all we did Wednesday," he said.
The work paid off. After the two schools had split the six singles matches, Nevada was able to put Neosho away in doubles play.
In number-one doubles, it was seniors Lisa Pendrak and Emily Teepe dominating the team of Lyndsay English and Katie Wear, 8-0.
The win gave Nevada a 4-3 edge in the team competition, with Nevada needing only one win in either number-two doubles or number-three doubles for the team victory.
Neosho would not go away without a fight. Both key doubles matches were tied at 4-4 before the Lady Tigers separated themselves.
The team of Lauren Compton and Molly Ferree won their doubles match 8-5, coming from behind after trailing 4-3 at one points. Compton and Ferree started hitting winners at the net and took four of the last six games.
The number-three doubles team of freshman Whitley del Rosario and sophomore Megan Stacy battled hard and led most of the way as they also won by an 8-5 score.
In singles play it was Pendrak, Ferree and Stacy taking victories.
The most dramatic matches of the afternoon came in number-two singles and number-six singles.
Teepe lost to English 8-6, but had multiple opportunities to take games from English as they battled four times at deuce. Each time the two evenly-matched players would exchange points and twice they were deadlocked at deuce five times in one game. Both of those hard-fought games went to English and they were the difference in the match.
At number-six singles it was Megan Stacy beating Neosho's Meghan Kelly 9-7.
Stacy jumped out to a big 6-3 lead but Kelly rallied. Kelly won four consecutive games to take a 7-6 lead, but Stacy did not give up and took the final three in a row to get the win.
"(Stacy) has had a couple of big leads and not been able to hold them," Pendrak said about the first-year varsity player. "But this is experience. That's why you compete."
Pendrak said he felt a couple of the girls gave up on some balls that they should have gotten too, and it made a difference in the singles matches.
"I wasn't pleased with some of our efforts a couple of times in singles," he said. "But we'll work on it."
In other singles scores, Pendrak won 8-2, Compton fell 8-2, Ferree won 8-4 and del Rosario lost 8-4.
Nevada's win makes them 2-0 in Southwest Conference play. They still have to face annual conference doormat Webb City twice, then take on Carthage and Neosho once more each to determine the conference championship.
"We still have to play out the season," Pendrak said. "But we like our position. We'd rather be undefeated than not."
Nevada faces Webb City twice next week, the first time on Monday in Nevada as the make-up date for a match that was rained out on Aug. 26.
Nevada is busy next week, as they play three matches and a tournament in five days beginning Monday. The Lady Tigers will also be in Harrisonville for a tournament Saturday.