Tri-School Season Warm up in Austin

August 22, 2021

Reagan Rattlers Travel to Austin to take on Lake Travis, Westwood and Westlake in a Friendly pre-season warm up.

The Rattler Varsity Tennis team travelled to Austin for a tough pre-season string of matches against the big three of the Austin ISD. All our players competed in this non-district encounter against Lake Travis, Westwood and Westlake High Schools. The team travelled on Thursday afternoon to play the Westlake High School in a the traditional doubles and and singles formats. This was followed up by them travelling again Friday morning leaving early to beat the traffic to compete against Lake Travis High school and then moved onto Westwood High school for the afternoon matches.

Traditionally the Austin High schools have proven to be tough opponents and have always fielded very strong girls and boys teams. This early season match up provided our players an opportunity to test their skills and fine tune their play in singles and doubles for the rest of the District season.

The matches were all played with the following formats:

  • Doubles – best of 2 sets with a third set 10 point tie breaker. No-ad scoring Line 1,2,&3. Other matches Pro-Set with no-ad scoring
  • Singles – Pro set (first to 8) with No-ad scoring

Thursday August 19th – Westlake High School

The Westlake matches on Thursday afternoon kicked off with the traditional doubles format. The boys and girls led out with same line-up as before.

First blood against Westlake went to Kathy and Melanie who won their match 6-0, 6-1. This was followed by a loss for the Line 1 girls of Alissa and Kara. Emily and Paulina put in a strong showing to win their doubles match-up 6-0,6-2.

Mathew Kim (Senior) in action

Other members of the Varsity team had an opportunity to play and the pairing of Mathew Kim and Gavin Fonger unfortunately succumbed to a close match at 5-8.

Line 3 boys Immanol and Anish were also overwhelmed by the Westlake team and despite a closely competed first set with a score of 5-7, they were unable to rally and lost the next set 1-6.

Joseph and Jon getting some much needed water after splitting sets in their doubles match against Westlake – They eventually went on to win the match

Jon Totorica and Joseph Snyman played some strong opposition at Line 2.  They lost the first set and went down 4-6. However they rallied back to split sets with a second set win of 6-2.  This led to an exciting 3rd set encounter which they won in style to take the match 10-6 for a great win.

While the action was happening on one court the Line 1 boys had their own duel that was shaping up to be a nail biter for the Rattlers. Kyle and Deuce similarly went down in the first set 4-6 to rally back and win the second set convincingly 6-3. The final set tiebreaker was filled with thrills and the Line 1 duo eventually converted another point for the rattlers and took the tie breaker 13-11.

Deuce and Kyle celebrate a big win at Line 1 doubles

After the competition doubles were all done, the team score was set at 3-2. This led the team to singles competitions and this was a much tougher affair after the doubles matches.

Despite some exciting and close matches the Rattlers only managed to prevail in three of their singles matches against Westlake. Notable mentions need to go out to Hunter Alexander (won 8-2), Kathy He (won 8-2) and Emily Higgs who took a nail biter tiebreak to win 9-8 (7-4) to win her singles match.

Jon Totorica in action against Westlake High School
Joseph Snyman (Senior) with a running forehand against Westlake High School
Emily Higgs (Senior) on her way to a well fought victory in the singles matches
Kathy He (Jr) serving it up to the opposition on her way to a solid win.

The Westlake team really dug deep to compete hard against our boys and girls singles, but unfortunately the Rattlers succumbed to a final score of 12-7.

Friday August 20th – Morning Session – Lake Travis High School

The morning session of Day 2 against Lake Travis proved to be a different and much tougher encounter for our Rattlers Varsity Tennis Team. The doubles kicked off and the only 2 doubles pairs able to secure a point for the overall score were, Line 1 boys doubles of Kyle Totorica and Deuce Daniel (w 7-5, 6-3) and the mixed doubles team of Byron Alexander and Livia Washington. Despite the Line 2 boys narrowly losing the 2nd set in a 7 point tie breaker( 2-6, 6-7(5-7)), the rest of the team were shown no mercy by the Lake Travis team.

The Singles matches followed a similar vein and the only victory to report from both the Girls and Boys line up was from Jon Totorica who beat his opponent 8-6.

The Pro-sets and no-ad scoring format demands the players to on point, precise and focused from the get go. There is no opportunity to come back from a deficit and our team were unable to capitalize on this. However, the quality of tennis did not reflect in the scores. The team will definitely be able to take a lot of positives from playing some higher level teams and this in turn will enable all our players to grow and develop from the experience.

The Rattlers were defeated by the Lake Travis team 10-3 in the final scoring.

Afternoon Session – Westwood High School

The afternoon session was again no easy match up from another strong opposition. The Westwood team has a reputation of always having strong players through all their lines and they came out to demonstrate their desire to make a strong showing in this non-district, pre-season encounter.

The doubles matches kicked off during a heat advisory in effect in Austin. The Rattlers unfortunately were unable to secure a point in all the doubles matches and this left an unassailable task to secure some points in the singles play.

Line 1 Boys Kyle Totorica secured a hardly fought point for the team despite a strong comeback from his opponent in the match. Kyle secured victory eventually with a great 8-4 win over Marko Mesarovic. Kara Greenlee at Line 3 for the girls also secured a solid win of 8-1 to get the team total to 2 against Westwood.

Unfortunately the Westwood team cranked up the pressure and took the rest of the matches to eventually take the team win at 10-2. Again the unusual format and no-ad scoring did not reflect the closeness of some of the matches and the quality of tennis played on both sides.

Conclusion

The coaches breakdown after a tough days matches.

Eventually after 2 days of hard fought tennis the Rattler Team had a lot of positives and some excellent platforms on which to learn and improve. Overall our Rattlers quality of play against probably some of the toughest opposition in the State proved to be a great learning opportunity for the team to build.

Coach Daniel and Assistant Coach Sierra will no doubt build and add to some of the strengths exhibited by the team, and no doubt work out a game plan to improve and develop on some of the weaknesses.

Without a doubt each years team brings out the best in all the players and coaches.

“Individual commitment to a group effort – this is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work” – Vince Lombardi

The Rattlers kick of their District season on Monday August 23rd against Roosevelt High School. The matches will be played at Blossom Tennis Center and play will start at 4:30pm. Come on out, wear your Reagan Green and come and support the team.

STRIKE EM!!!

submitted by Jake Snyman