The Bennington girls tennis team traveled to Blair's Stemmermann Park on Thursday and won, 8-1.
Coach David Christensen's varsity Bears were 1-2 in singles matches, but went 0-for-6 in singles. Mallory Dreher and Abi Rothlisberger combined for the home team's lone victory in No. 1 doubles, 8-6.
“Keeping our energy up and, definitely, not getting down on ourselves really helped us this match,” Dreher said.
Communication has been key to the pairing's success, the senior added. The Blair standouts learned what strategies work best together, particularly in their positioning on the court.
“Trying not to hit it to the person at the net has definitely helped a lot,” Dreher noted, smiling.
In addition to their win, Jenna Murch-Shafer and Jazmyne Roach played a competitive No. 2 doubles match, falling 8-5 to two Badgers. Alexandra Nilges and Abi Lundberg lost their match 8-0, too.
Coach Christensen said all of the singles matches between the Bears and Bennington were competitive as well even with the road team winning all six. Murch-Shafer lost the closest matchup, 9-8, taking the No. 4 singles contest to a tiebreaker.
Rothlisberger, meanwhile, fell 8-4 and Shelby Kain lost 8-2. Nilges and Lundberg dropped 8-0 and 8-1 matches, respectively.
BHS' Hayen Bosanek, Quinn Avila, Ashley Behnk and Izabella Gaskill played unscored matches and fell short, too. Their Bears were scheduled to compete Monday against Ralston before today's 4 p.m. home dual with Waverly. The junior varsity tennis players compete on the Vikings' home courts at the same time.
