Love and war comes true in our school’s newest tennis season. With rising stars and crashing strikes, this season of tennis has proven to be both challenging and rewarding. With so many new players, they have a whole new crop of fresh talent that they can grow into strong, athletic Pirates. 

Head coach Jonathan Flaxbart has worked tirelessly all season to make sure his team learns and grows as much as they possibly can. Luckily for Flaxbart most of his team’s new players were already athletic to start with, so all he had to focus on was teaching them how to apply their skills to tennis.

“What was nice about this year is that a lot of the new guys that joined were already pretty athletic so it was just getting them to understand how to hold and swing a tennis racket,” Flaxbart said.

An  example of Coach Flaxbart’s hard work is junior Israel Cervantes who went from being the thirteenth best player on the team freshman year, to being the current number one player of the team. Cervantes Says that even though they’ve been struggling a bit since most of the team is new, they are currently doing better than the previous season. Despite the fact that they are losing more than winning, Cervantes believes that his team is doing a great job and is growing at an amazing pace.

“This season is definitely a growing season. Most of our team is new and because of that we have struggled to keep up with the other teams compared to last season where we still lost more than we’ve won but as a team we have had many more wins.” Cervantes said.

Another player on the tennis team, Micah Bryson, has a similar story. Although unlike Cervantes this is Bryson’s first year on the team. According to him, his first season started with a bit of a rough patch, but with practice, games, and support from his coach, he has blossomed into a full-fledged tennis player that gets better everyday.

“It’s my first year, I started off a little rocky but I’m getting better,” Bryson said.