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Lady Tigers tennis drops season opener at home
The Nevada High School girls' tennis team didn't get much of a chance to ease their way into the new season as they were forced to go right to work with a tough test against the Joplin Lady Eagles in the season opener Thursday night.
The Lady Eagles came into the night in a similar situation as they already had one very tough match under their belts. In their season opener, the Lady Eagles played Webb City and suffered a 6-3 defeat. The Lady Tigers, on the other hand, came into the day with very high hopes for starting off a strong season on the winning track as Joplin's top two players who ran over nearly all of the competition set in front of them graduated last year.
That early defeat gave the Lady Eagles an added motivation to put up a strong performance and that motivation paid off in a big way as they handed head coach Sam Short's Lady Tigers a 6-3 season-opening defeat.
Despite the defeat, however, Short still spoke highly of her team and their overall performance on the day. "We ended up 3-6, it could have easily been 4-5 or 5-4," she said. "You never know what you need to work on until you see them play against somebody else that they haven't played against all summer long."
Things got off to a somewhat slow start for the Lady Tigers as they struggled their way through singles competition, with just a couple of exceptions. Most notable of those exceptions was the toughest battle of the day between Leah Creasy and Joplin's Megan McCreary.
As the two got their No. 2 singles match under way, a tough and very even battle quickly ensued. Though varsity matches are typically only played to eight games, but Creasy needed an extra game to take the victory by the required two-game margin, beating McCreary 9-7.
That was Nevada's only win in singles play, but things turned around substantially in doubles competition. It wasn't, however, the only bright spot as Katlyn Short and Katie Brauer were both able to keep their matches close. Short lost the No. 1 singles match to Joplin's Siri Ancha, 8-5, while Brauer fell to Laela Zaid, 8-6.
After dropping six of seven singles matches, the Lady Tigers made an almost complete turnaround on their way to two victories in three doubles matches.
"I think once they settled in, we could see an improvement in our doubles," Short said. "I mean, they finally were coming around, thinking about what needed to be done and settled in."
Creasy found herself in yet another tough battle as she teamed up with Regan Kimbrough in doubles play. The two got off to a slow start, but were ultimately able to work their way to a come-from-behind victory over Joplin's Ancha and Lexi Wilcoxon by a final score of 8-6.
Despite their struggles in singles play, Ashley McKinley and Alexa Cubbage made a strong comeback as well on their way to another close victory by a final score of 8-6. "Alexa Cubbage, I think she'll come around," Short said. She's never played tennis, I think that she'll get used to it."
Speaking of McKinley, Short added, "Some of her serving, I've never seen her serve like that, ever. That's hard to come back when you lose like 2-8."
Though things didn't quite turn out the way she would have liked, Short still came out of Thursday's season opener with a very positive attitude. There were many positive things she could see and the Lady Tigers still have a long season ahead of them and will get their first chance to wash away the bad taste from the loss on Monday, when they host Monett at 4:30 p.m.
"Overall, I'm pretty happy," Short said. "Do we have things to work on? Yes. If I said no, I'm living in another world."