Girls' Tennis Falls to Rival Andover in Season Finale

Girls’ varsity tennis narrowly lost to Andover 3-6 in their final match of the season. The team showed improvement from the first time they played Andover at the end of April, when they lost 2-7.Co-captain Giulia Olsson, who played number five, and lower Callan Malone, who played number four, won their singles matches 6-3, 2-6 10-8 and 6-2, 4-6 and 10-2 respectively. Number three partners lower Helen Edwards and senior co-captain Nicole Yoon won their doubles eight-game pro-set 8-4."Giulia had a solid singles match. Her opponent had quite a temper, but Giulia didn't let it get to her and ended up winning 10-8 in the third set tiebreaker," lower Callan Malone said. "Both Giulia and I had close singles matches and fought to win."Prep Taylor Jean-Jacques, who played number one singles, lost with the close set scores of 4-6 and 5-7."I think it went well. I definitely improved throughout the game. We were pretty well paired both determined to win," Jean-Jacques said. "In the beginning it was back in forth with the score but towards the end my opponent started winning. I was down 5-2 in the second set and managed to equalize the score at 5-5.""Taylor had a really close match. She has so much potential because she’s really young—she just turned fifteen," Olsson said. "Taylor’s learned a lot because she has been playing eighteen year old seniors every match and she always takes something away from every match.""Andover is a really good opponent. They were one of the harder matches of the season," lower Helen Edwards said."During the season, overall, we played pretty well. Though we had some tough losses and we didn’t make it to New England, we improved over the course of the season particularly in doubles," Jean-Jacques said.This improvement was visible particularly in Malone’s and Olsson’s doubles match."Our doubles match was also close with an 8-6 loss, which was quite a step up from our 8-0 loss to Andover earlier in the season," Malone said."We’ve gotten a lot more serious as a team this season," Olsson said. "I think the games reflect this because they were closer and lasted longer—we had a lot of deuces. I am confident that next year the team can definitely take on Andover. We showed today that we are very capable of doing that and next year the team needs that extra push."The match against Andover marked the end of an era for Olsson and Yoon, who have played on the girls’ varsity A tennis term for three and two years respectively. Unfortunately, senior Anna Gruen was unable to play due to medical reasons."It is sad to see the seniors go. But, despite the fact we lost, it was a nice way to wrap up the season because everyone played really well," Edwards said."We are going to miss our captains, Nicole and Giulia so much as they go off to college," Malone said. "It was a much stronger season than last year and I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I'm incredibly proud of all the girls for playing such a great season."