Boys tennis sets in season
March 15, 2019
Their first preseason game was on Feb.28, but the boy’s tennis team hardly has past experience to go by.
In this season of the Birmingham Community Charter High School boys tennis team, there’s one returning varsity player, two returning JV players and no Frosh team due to lack of members. For a month, training and conditioning have been separated into three courts.
“If you were on court one you were varsity, which was more advanced so you did stuff quicker,” said Evan Gleason, a freshman on the varsity team. “The second court was like the middle, like you’re probably varsity and the third court they do basic stuff.”
It wasn’t until Feb. 25 that the team started doing match plays against each other.
“A lot of the kids, we’re all basically new, (and) we’re not, our expectations are very low,” Gleason said. “Because we’re a brand new team. So our goal is just to make playoffs.”
That means unless the team pulls a surprising underdog season, they may end up with a score lower than last year’s overall score of 8-7. The main problem is that the seniors on the team last year graduated and left the team with less experienced players.
All three of Daniel Pearl Magnet High School’s players on the team are new, with varsity freshmen Gleason, Ethan De Barraicua (JV) and senior/Managing Editor of The Pearl Post Rudraj Koppikar (varsity). Gleason joined to switch out of P.E. and De Barraicua joined because his father wanted him to.
Koppikar has a friend in the girl’s tennis team, Karina Mara, but he joined for his own reasons.
“She influenced me,” he said. “But also I didn’t want to be bored second semester. You know, seniors leave. Otherwise, I’d just go home and be bored.”
Gleason thinks that the current four seniors on the team are doing well, including Koppikar.
“Of course he’s not going to be the best player on the team but all the seniors are actually pretty good,” Gleason said. “None of them are like, ‘aw we’re not going to win anything.’ We might be able to win a few games.”
