As courtside temperatures rose past 85 F, the varsity tennis team continued its quest to grow both individually and as a team as they traveled to Lynchburg for its first away contest of the season. Host Virginia Episcopal School (VES) proved to be too much for singles ladder, but if a single word needed to be chosen to describe the efforts of both teams, it would be “persistent.”
On the singles side, the lopsided ladder results (0-6) does not reflect the amount of effort that was demonstrated. Most matches went over an hour and two matches (Cadets Rankin Horsley and WeiAn Chen) each took nearly two hours to complete, sliding toward marathon efforts for the high school 10-game pro set format. Of particular note, Chen and his opponet Courville were both fired up and locked together in a close match up to 7-all before Courville was able to claim a victory at #4 Singles. Meanwhile, Cadet Turner Wall at #2 was able to take most games to deuce but was frustrated in closing off the game by the cool point development of Carl Xiao. At #1 Singles, Horsley always kept his contest with Nero Cao to within a game. At 9-10, Horsley was serving to force a tie-breaker to determine his match outcome. After the 6th deuce point, Cao was finally able to break Horsley, closing the Singles competition with the match score and outcome locked in favor of the Bishops 0-6.
But the doubles side was not willing to just pack up regardless of the match score. They were able to either find a second wind (Horsley and Turner Wall) or get themselves ignited up to enter the fray (Dan Kim, Raines Wall, Walter Kasica, and Sam Hazan — an unexpected entry due to Chen’s injury (rolled ankle) with a roar. The Doubles ladder was able to add 3 victory points to the team score. Horsley and Kim improve their record at #1 Doubles to 3-1. Wall and Wall continue to show that family ties can indeed bind, logging in their second consecutive victory to move to 2-0 at #2. Hazan and James Silk were able to log in exhibition singles matches during official singles play.
Individual Match Scores:
Singles
#1 – Rankin Horsley v Nero Cao : 9-11
#2 – Turner Wall v Carl Xiao : 1-10
#3 – Frankie Chang v Jack Wu : 2-10
#4 – WeiAn Chen v Landon Courville : 7-10
#5 – Zachariah Gjenasaj v Holt Hogan : 1-10
#6 – Alex Vogel v Zeil Ren : 6-10
Doubles
#1 – Horsley and Dan Kim v Xiao and Wu : 8-3
#2 – WallT and Raines Wall v Hogan and Ren : 8-3
#3 – Walter Kasica and Sam Hazan v Robert Mays and Peter Harrington : 8-4
