With the winter sports season having just ended, schools nationwide are transitioning to spring athletics. Among these spring sports is girl’s tennis. The practices for girls tennis started on Monday, Feb. 20 coached by Math teacher Andrew Bellairs. This will be Bellairs’ second season coaching the Wildcats, ending his last season with a 7-7 record. Heading into the season, Coach Bellairs had a few concerns. 

“We lost four seniors from our starting six last year, so we need to replace them,” said Bellairs. 

In high school tennis, you only have your best 6 players (for junior varsity and varsity) play matches against other schools. Bellairs recognized that most of his advanced players were coached in the off-season through private lessons. Bellairs went on to say how he wanted to pay special attention to the newcomers.

”I want to focus on helping the new people who haven’t played before and leaving the experienced players to practice amongst themselves,” said Bellairs.

Bellairs thought the turnout for tryouts was a good amount, with 18 girls showing up. Bellairs wants to keep around 12 to have a starting 6 with a backup/bench and should be cutting the remaining few in the near future.  

“I’m really using tryouts to find younger players that I can work with to build their skills for the future,” said Bellairs. One of the veteran players, Senior Sophia Fafatas, pitched her ideas on what to work on for the upcoming season. 

“We’ll need to learn to work together as a team. This just means supporting… and helping each other improve,” said Fafatas. She also realized, as with Bellairs, that the experienced tennis players usually “had a few clinics in the off-season, and a lot of girls went to those for extra practice.” 

For the next few weeks, they’ll be training in preparation for their matches. The girl’s first match is March 15 against Parry McCluer. They will be played at 4:30 on the Rockbridge County tennis courts. If you want to join the tennis team or find out more about it, go to https://rockbridgeathletics.com or email Coach Bellairs at [email protected].