Island girls tennis team undefeated in league play

The Shelter Island girls tennis team had three matches last week. The girls went 2-1 with wins over Mattituck and Southampton.

The loss was a non-league scrimmage against Westhampton, a school in a higher league.

We started the week off going to Westhampton where the girls did a great job against a substantially larger school with an excellent tennis reputation. We had two winning courts. Keri Ann Mahoney won at first singles, beating Alexa Pedneault 6-2, 7-5. Emily Hyatt, playing second singles, had a long match that she won in a third set tiebreaker versus Bobbi Rifkin. The other matches were all competitive with Westhampton coming out on the winning end. The overall match score was 5-2 in favor of Westhampton, but I am very proud of how the girls represented Shelter Island tennis.

On Wednesday we went to Mattituck. I was surprised they didn’t have the 10 girls needed to play and had to default third doubles. We started the match with a 1 to 0 lead, although we did not need it as the girls played well and we won 6-1. The first three singles players — Keri Ann, Emily and Caitlin Binder — all had easy wins, only losing 8 games between them. Madi Hallman had a tough match falling to Kim Scheer.

The two doubles teams, Evi Saunders and Nicole Poleschuk at first and Jenny Case and Brianna Kimmelmann at second, also had easy wins.

On Friday, we had a home match against Southampton. This team was also short players. They defaulted second and third doubles. At first singles Keri Ann, who was undefeated, was tested more than in any of her other matches and did a great job of staying undefeated, winning 6-4, 6-3 over Molly Squires. Emily had a long battle with Olivia Brnyn at second singles but fell short 6-3, 6-2. Caitlin played well at third singles and won quickly 6-4, 6-2.

Madi avenged her loss from Wednesday. She lost the first set 6-0 and came over to me to say the girl didn’t score correctly. I said we can’t change that now. She said then I have to win the next set and a tiebreaker to win the match. I said yes, and that is what she did. She won the second set 6-3 and won the tiebreaker 7-3. It was an awesome comeback after a frustrating 6-0 first set loss.

The first doubles team of Evi and Nicole had some really great points but fell to Gianna Fiorello and Caleigh Kienback.
We won the match 5-2. We will be playing Southampton again the last day of the season and it should be a great match if they have all of their players.

The team’s record is 4-0 in their league and 4-1 overall. We have away matches this week and will return to our home courts on Wednesday, October 2 against Shoreham and Friday, October 4 against Center Moriches. I hope to see you there.

Sue Warner is the Shelter Island tennis coach.