The Girls Tennis team is in season, and athletes are preparing for upcoming games.

Varsity Coach Matt Tadla said, “What we’re most looking forward to is a group of nine seniors all trying to finish out their tennis careers. We had a good finish last year in sectionals, and we’re trying to build on that. Our group of veterans are trying to keep it going and have a great senior year and close on a high note.”

Coach Dominic Del Rosario said, “I’m very excited that we have seven sophomores and seven freshmen, we’re a very young team.”

“I’m looking for them to learn, have fun, and try to get a lot of wins,” Del Rosario said.

Each match needs a lot of preparation.

Tadla said, preparation includes “starting out with the basics early in the year and separating the players into groups, but still keeping them together. And [we] allow the well-established players to help the beginner level players.”

During practice, JV athletes play on one side against varsity practicing on another. They are broken into teams.

Del Rosario said, his strategy for his JV team, especially the newer players, is “teaching them the fundamentals, and doing it over and over (repetition) and to also incorporate fun into what we do.”

The coaches are not the only ones excited for the ongoing season.

Varsity player Roochi Shah said, “It’s always great to see progress from like sophomore year (2017-2018), none of us place. Then junior year, a couple of us placed. And then senior year hopefully all of us can place [at conferences].”

Girls tennis members raised the most money at the Orange and Green Night fundraiser this fall.

The purpose of the fundraiser was to raise money for the various sports involved as well as donating to a charity. Each sport involved had to come up with a dance routine to perform.

“Not only is it a good cause, but [it is beneficial] to know that there are other sports out there. A lot of other sports you don’t know about,” Lauryn Emrick, junior, said.

“Girls tennis is very underappreciated, like we’re definitely not like football or volleyball or soccer that get a lot of the attention and funding. We’re kind of the underdogs,” Shah said.

Most of the money raised was donated to Make-A-Wish while a portion will go into the girls tennis program.

“It was around $800, so $600 of that will go to Make-A-Wish foundation. The other 25 percent will go back it to us to get better equipment and stuff to better our program,” Emrick said.

The team won with its dance routine for the fundraiser.

Emrick said, “We were all in the dance room, and it was so fun. And every day, the deal coach made was that we did the dance as a warm-up instead of running, so everyone was into that.”

With the money raised from the fundraiser, the team has a wish list of items.

“It’d be really nice if we had either a hidden wall or another coach or another ball machine,” Shan said.