Girls Tennis

1. Sophomore Caroline Ober starts to serve at a match on May 7. 2. Sophomores Cassie Mauer and Emma Beehler drink and rest between matches on May 7. 3. Ober smiles and talks to the tennis coach on May 7. Photos courtesy of Morgan Wright.

Together, we swing

Girls tennis team finds success on court, friendships off court

Emerson Elledge elledeme000@hsestudents.org

In tennis, love is another word for a score of zero. Even if the FHS girls tennis team members dread the score of love, that does not stop them from loving each other on and off the court. The FHS girls tennis team’s strongest asset is not their serves or performance throughout the season, it is the relationships the team intentionally cultivates with each other that serves them the best, according to team members. “We usually engage in a lot of team-building activities,” freshman Addison Luckuck. “That includes in practice and outside of practice, like going to restaurants and 1 groups and other group events. We also focus on just generally being kind to each other.” Luckuck believes that the team starts to become close when the season occurs. Girls tennis is a spring sport, therefore the team has known

each other for the better part of a school year when the season starts. “Tennis is really mental, so we really bring each other up during matches because it is a really tough sport,” sophomore Emma Beehler said. It has often been said that tennis is as much a mental game as it is a physical one. It is not uncommon for tennis players to struggle with their mental health as a result of the sport, like the famous tennis player, Naomi Osaka. Osaka even withdrew from the 2021 French Open due to her struggles with her mental health. This makes it crucial for a team to care and support each other, as the sport is already so mentally draining. The tennis team will go to get smoothies after practices and get ice cream after matches if there is time to congratulate each other and to build each other back up. “We have team morale because we 3 connect so well with each other,” Luckcuck said. “It gets a little bit easier for us to just communicate given that it is a 2

tennis team, and people want to help each other get better.” Coaches often are the ones to establish the status quo, on and off the court. Therefore, the coaches tend to put the first foot in the door when creating a team culture. “People have good relationships with the coaches, which makes us all have good attitudes,” junior Izzy Mokra said. The culture on the team rarely ebbs and flows with the year and team, and rather changes based on a member’s perspective and experience on the team. With Mokra being on the team for three years, Beehler for two years, and Luckuck just this year, they have a lot of variety in their perspectives on the culture and how to preserve it. Luckuck does not know what the culture is like during the off season, as she will experience her first off season after this year, but looks forward to it. “In the years moving forward, I think I will try to generally be a friend to the other freshmen,” Luckuck said. “I know it is difficult to be a freshman on the team without having any youth, like friends who have experienced this before. So I will just generally [be] looking out for freshmen and [give] them advice that I think will help preserve the kindness that we show.”