Girls’ Tennis Travels to Andover

Last Saturday, girls’ varsity tennis faced off Andover at an away game, losing with a score of 2-7. Despite breaking their winning streak this season, the girls were proud of the match, compared to the past two years’ losses with the scores of 0-9 against Andover.

Senior and co-captain Gabby Gabel believes that the team’s confidence helped bring up the scores this year. “This year, we are so much stronger and so much more confident, and honestly, I was expecting it to be a close match, Gabel said.

The team proved their athleticism and determination by playing close matches with scores such as 4-6 and 6-7 within each set. In fact, based off of the close matches on Saturday, Gabel hopes to beat Andover later this season. “We definitely gave Andover a good battle, and I have confidence that every single player on our team could have won their matches; they weren’t any better than us, they just played better that day,” she said.

Upper Elizabeth Yang agreed, affirming that the team’s strength helped them put up a fight with Andover. “While many of Andover’s top players just graduated, the Exeter team has gotten stronger since last year, so we definitely gave Andover a battle this time around,” said Yang.

Before the game, the team worked on the variety and consistency of their shots to improve their game. “Over the past few weeks, we’ve been focusing on making sure we don’t lose points to silly mistakes,” said upper Isobel Anderson.

In addition to working on shots, the team concentrated on specific strategies which led to one of their wins from Anderson and Gabel. “We worked a lot on our doubles play and volleying, which is why I think that our doubles matches were such good matches,” said Gabel. Prep Emily Baxter scored the other point in her singles match.

For the rest of the season, the girls hope to continue to work on their shots and prepare for E/A at the end of the season. After facing an opponent with strong shots, Anderson plans to work on the variety and placement of her shots.

“We will be definitely working on coming to the net more often and being more aggressive with our shot selection and placement,” Anderson said.

Yang believes the game was a good experience for gaining insight on what the team needs to work on to defeat Andover at the end of the season. “From this experience, we now know what to work on against our particular opponents before our final match up against Andover at the end of the season,” said Yang.

The next match that the girls play will be an away game against Choate Rosemary Hall on Saturday.