Tiger Tennis: An Update on our Team

Urbana Boys Tennis has just recently started their season and they are off to a promising start.

There have been six scheduled meets. These meets are: at home against Urbana University High School (Uni), away against Normal University High School (Normal U High), at home against St. Thomas More (STM), away at Bloomington for the Bloomington Invitational, away at Normal West High School and away at Centennial High School.

Urbana has only one win but they have played many good teams and they have always played their heart out and have built a solid fan base.

Junior Katie Carroll, who has been the top-ranked player for Urbana Girls Tennis for the past two years, said, “I am really looking forward to this season. We have some great players and the team has great potential.”

Against STM, on April 10th, the Tigers played really well and it came down to the last match to decide who wins.

This last match played involve Sami Messai and Matt Peterson playing doubles against two of STM’s finest players.

This was a close match all of the way and even came down to a ten-point tiebreaker. For those who don’t know, a ten-point tiebreaker is just like overtime in other sports. Urbana ended up losing the overall meet 4-5.

Unfortunately, Peterson and Messai lost this match but it really reflected the work ethic that they, and the whole Tennis team, have been putting in.

Head Coach Christopher Gratkins addressed his team after the meet in their team huddle.

Gratkins said, “You guys played great today. It was aclose match all the way through and those are the ones you hate to lose.”

Gratkins later went on to say how proud he was of the team and how well they played. He stressed a couple key points that the boys team has been going over in practice and ended with a satisfied tone because he knew his team tried very hard.

On April 15th, the Tigers played Normal West. This has been their only win of the season thus far, and the played great. The Tigers wins every single match the played and won the overall meet 9-0. It was a very dominating performance for Urbana as they were relentless and most matches were not even close.

Urbana Tennis plays all of their home matches at Blair Park and they are always very entertaining to watch. They encourage everyone who can to come out for support!