After summer break, the fall sports are up and running with their season’s schedule. One of the teams competing at the moment is Arcadia High Schools’ (AHS) Girls Tennis team. The Varsity team is directed by Coach Ruth Lagace while the JV team is led by Coach Damon Lieu.

The tennis tournament, which took place on Sept. 1 and 2 at Portola High School, lasted about five to six hours, with the matches typically lasting from thirty minutes to one hour.

Before the tournament, the girls spent time practicing with their practices ending at around 4:30. Many of the players have had prior experiences with practicing and participating in competitions and matches.

“Before we would just play sets against each other because we were determining the line-up, but since there are not enough courts, not everyone was able to play. Some wouldn’t play at all,” said freshman Emma Wang, who is a part of the JV team.

According to Wang, the team they were going against seemed especially skilled because when they were warming up, their serves and hits looked very quick.

To calculate the total number of points, all the sets in total for a team are for the match, and there are six games in a set. For the six games, each consists of four points that are usually counted by fifteen, thirty, forty, and forty-five points.

In usual matches, they would only play against one school, while in tournaments, multiple schools and matches are played. This tournament had a total of five matches spread out over two days.

On Sept. 1, the tennis team won two of the matches but lost the third. However, on Sept. 2, both matches were won.

In Wang’s experience, she said, “It was pretty challenging. The set that I played, the score was so close that we ended up doing a tiebreaker.”

While it is not easy to play a season during unprecedented times, the Girls Tennis team is doing a great job with the season just beginning. While there will always be ups and downs along the way, it is only expected to happen with the sudden return for many back to school. Even with failures and setbacks, preservation and resilience to these will allow them to become stronger players.

Photo courtesy of Serena Chin