A season of close matches came down to more of the same for the Merrill girls tennis team. The Bluejays ended up in sixth place at last week’s Valley Meet in Wausau, then were unable to advance anyone out of Monday’s Subsectional in Stevens Point.
“The mood was quiet,” MHS coach Janet Thompson said of Monday’s bus ride home. “I think the girls were disappointed. I don’t want to say dejected, but it was disappointing to not move anybody on.
“It was unfortunate the way the seeding fell. Chloe Krahn had a lot of wins over the season, but ended facing one of the few girls that beat her before. Megan Smith won her first match, and again had very few losses on the season. But she played a girl from Everest that hits virtually everything back, and Megan came up on the short end.”
Smith was the #3 seed at #3 singles, while Krahn was the #4 seed at #2 singles.
The Jays placed eighth in the nine-team subsectional with two points. SPASH won it with 24 and Rhinelander edged Wausau East 14-10 for second.
Valley Meet
The MHS girls scored 45 points in the overall conference standings to finish sixth, just four behind Wausau West and 14 ahead of Wis. Rapids. SPASH won this, too, scoring 109.
“The conference match lined up quite closely with how our season went in general,” Thompson said. “We came close in a fair number of matches but were unable to pull out a lot of victories.
“Annie (DeBroux), Sarah (Lentz) and the doubles team of Morgan (Thompson) and Katie (Purmal) finished as consolation champions. Chloe was seeded fourth and finished in fourth place. She had a terrific match against Marshfield’s Martha Kupfer. Nearly every point was a long battle, but Chloe held on, winning points often with strategic placement. She was patient in waiting for the right time to go for winners.
“Megan Smith pulled off an upset of the number one seeded Madison DeBot of St. Point. Megan stayed not only physically, but mentally tough. After losing the first set she adjusted to her hard-hitting opponent and took charge of the second set and the 10 point tie-break with lots of deep baseline shots that DeBot started having trouble returning.”
Merrill did score at every position in the event, but Smith’s third-place finish was the best. She opened with a 6-2, 6-0 win, fell 6-3, 6-1, then topped DeBot 4-6, 6-4, 14-12.
Krahn ended up 4th, with two losses after a 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 start. The #1 doubles group of Marissa Wilde/Ashley Ollhoff and the #3 team of Hanna Cohrs/Rachel Bayer both won second-round matches, but lost in the consolation championship match.
The Jays closed out the season at 7-11 overall and 1-5 in the WVC.
“I was fairly pleased with our overall record of 7-11,” Thompson said. “Our finish in the conference, however, was tough to take. We lost three of the five matches by a margin of 3-4. Those meets came down to the last, hard-fought battle – often continuing way past the duration of all the others. We just couldn’t pull those out. Staying focused and finishing well under pressure will need to be a top goal for us next season.”