DRAFFENVILLE – The top two girl’s doubles teams won their matches last week against Graves County in the teams 7-2 loss to the Lady Eagles. Despite losing all 7 singles matches, several were close, competitive matches. It took Graves County’s Ellie Mitchell 8 games to beat Nikki Fehrenbacher 8-6 and Allie Fiske won 5 games in her 8-5 loss to Madison Wiggons.
“I was happy to see our top two doubles teams play well”, Head Coach Tyler Brockman said. “They are both going into the regional tournament playing some of their best tennis of the year. I thought we had some very close singles matches that could have gone either way but we just came up on the short side this time.”
Hunter Jaco out-lasted Graves County’s Jaron Hale winning his singles match 9-8, winning the tie-breaker 7-5. The doubles team of Kaleb Willie and Dalton Riley won 9-8, also going to a tie-breaker over Brady Ellegood and Logan Johnson. The doubles team of Hayden Jaco and Blake Sandlin battled through 16 games to tie 8-8. They ultimately lost the tie-breaker 7-5 to Jaron Hale and Isaac Carrico.
Two singles matches were hard fought wins for the Graves County boys with Isaac Carrico beating Kaleb Willie 8-5 and Marcos Macias beat Charlie Reid 8-5.
“It was great to see so many close matches today on both sides”, Brockman said. “Having three tie breakers in a single team match is really uncommon and I was glad that we were able to pull two of those matches out. I thought out kids fought hard in the singles matches and we had some really close scores. Our kids have shown tremendous improvement from earlier in the year when we played Graves so that was the most exciting thing about the match.”
On Tuesday against Murray, the girls lost 7-2 to Murray. Abbey Harrington beat Leah Taylor 8-4 and the doubles team of Allie Fiske and Abbey Harrison beat Abby Parker and Livi Rogers 9-7.
“I was very proud of Abbey and Allie for coming back in their doubles matches”, Brockman said. “They are 6-1 on the season together and have shown a ton of improvement as a team as the year has gone on. Murray is a good team so this was good to help prepare us for the regional tournament next week against some more top-quality players.”
The boy’s team also lost 7-2, picking up wins in singles by Dalton Riley 8-5 over Sam Morgan and Hayden Jaco and Blake Sandlin beating Sam Morgan and Brandon Tish 8-6 in doubles. Hayden Jaco dropped his match 9-8 to Gustavo Leon, losing in a tie-breaker 7-5.
“This was a good match for us against a very balanced Murray team”, Brockman said. “I thought our top doubles teams played well again and I was really pleased with how Hayden and Dalton played in their singles matches. We will have a strong week of practice and then get ready for the regional tournament next week in Paducah.”
