As we start to get school under way, the extracurricular activities with it begin as well. From going to football games to attending band competitions, there are many ways to get involved outside of school. It can be argued that these things add to the whole shape of the high school experience because of the memories and quality experiences they create. One activity that is also starting is tennis. The team is looking forward to the season, and they should be fairly successful.

     First, the team this year has a solid group of seniors consisting of Jensen Burrous, Noah Preston, Jack Miller, Rye Ellington, Joseph Ayers, Jon Emmons, Montez Burns, and myself, with manager Erika Johnson as well. Most of those seniors started freshman year and have worked their way up into the current varsity lineup. There are seven varsity spots in a varsity tennis lineup and that includes three singles and two doubles spots. One, two, and three singles are myself, Jensen Burrous, and Nolan Hines. One and two doubles are Noah Preston and Bryon Hurst and Jack Miller and Rye Ellington. This lineup differs from last year’s because coach Hurst decided to break up the one doubles from last year, moving Jensen Burrous to singles and keeping Bryon Hurst at doubles. All in all, the team should have a pretty decent season this year. 

     The first match of the season was on Wednesday of last week, and it was against Logansport. Even though Logansport lost 8-9 seniors last year, our team managed to take home the win. I managed to win a match against returning singles player Dylan Pearson, who improved very much from last year. Jensen Burrous won his match against hard-hitting Connor Penz. Nolan Hines won his very first varsity match at singles also. Bryon Hurst and Noah Preston won their doubles match as well against a team consisting of Cooper Smith and a former JV player. Cass tennis walked off the courts with a 4-1 win for their first match of the season. This showed the team where they were at and what they also needed to improve on. 

     The traditional Cass invite was on Saturday the 22nd, and the usual teams were there, including Tippy Valley and Eastern, but Maconaquah is usually the other team that is a part of the invite. They were unable to attend because they didn’t have enough players to form a team this year. They graduated all but 1 player from their lineup, and they didn’t have any extra players to fill those spots. Carrol was able to sub in for Maconaquah this year to be the third team in the tournament. After one round of play, the weather got out of hand, and the rain caused the invite to get canceled unfortunately. This week, Cass tennis had 2 matches against Twin Lakes and Western, who were both solid teams all around. Our tennis team managed to win both matches 3-2 after having fought very hard. Those wins propelled the team in conference rankings and also confidence going into the rest of the season. 

     In conclusion, the Cass tennis team has started out 3-0 on the year and will have a very good looking season ahead of them. With that being said, the IHSAA threw the team a curveball right before the season when they replaced Maconaquah with Cass in the Peru sectional. The team was in the Logansport sectional for many years, and the move definitely threw myself and the team off guard. Peru has won their sectional numerous times and always has a great team. Whether Cass tennis can focus up and take them down in sectionals later in the season is still a question yet to be answered.