Lightning tennis. The team has played through some record breaking weather this season. Photo courtesy of tennis coach Timothy Foley.
There’s lots to know about tennis at San Luis Obispo High School, yet some students don’t know anything. Tennis is one of the few teams that rarely gets reported on, whether it be on the Tiger News Network or SLOHS Expressions.
Until today.
There are four separate tennis teams associated with SLOHS: girls varsity and junior varsity, and boys varsity and junior varsity. At the beginning of the year, when girls tennis was insession, the JV team did not have a coach.
There was only one coach present, and he was focused on the varsity team, as was his job. The JV team would warm up and play practice matches, and the varsity coach would occasionally check in. However, the rest of practice was up to the team.
When it came to actual matches, the varsity coach was able to represent the team and help organize games.
“The functionality of games and matches were very bad and very messy,” said freshman Sydney Foxford.
Towards the end of the summer 2022, the tryouts to make the girls tennis teams commenced. There were two coaches, one for varsity and one for JV. At the last tryout everyone was told that did not make the varsity team, would be on the JV team. Shortly after, practice started and the two teams ended up with just one coach.
As some people know, when you play a sport at SLOHS, it qualifies as fifth period and a PE class. That means that practice would usually go from 2:23 pm until 5:00 in the afternoon.
“Practice would go until 6:30, but sometimes earlier depending on if we had a game or not,” said freshmen Mackensie Moore.
There are a total of six tennis courts on campus, and most of these courts were taken by varsity as soon as period five started.
“Varsity took up more than four of the six courts, but junior varsity had more people than varsity,” said Foxford.
On most days, the entire junior varsity team would have to practice on two of the courts. Sometimes JV was only allowed to use one, that is over 15 players on a single court with no coach.
Regardless of how put together the team was, everyone agreed on one thing: The reason they were there.
“It didn’t matter because we were all there to play and have fun either way,” said Moore.
Even though the process was tough, the team still did well and won most of their games. With more resources and better organization, the girls JV tennis team could do wonders.