The girls tennis team has slowly been losing their numbers in the past decade due to other sports being moved around and lack of interest.
Currently there are only two girls on the tennis team who are actively competing in matches. In an interview with Tennis coach Gregg Laub, he had also shared how in the past few years since becoming the coach again it has been difficult to obtain the interest of the students to join the team. Laub stated that when an interest meeting was held 12 girls showed up in may of last school year (2023-24). When June came around, Laub attempted to reach out to said girls who had signed up but received no response.
“I want to do more for the girls but it’s limited with a small number interested,” Laub had stated.
He had also emailed the entire student body in may of last year to announce he would be holding open courts at the middle school to also try and grab interest.
Laub had also expressed how he believed that the moving of girls soccer to a fall sport had taken away some of his team. He had noticed that there were only a few girls on the team that were “tennis girls” as he called it, and the other girls on the team were soccer girls who also wanted to play tennis to have a sport in the fall.
In the 2012-2013 school year, in the state of Pennsylvania, girls soccer moved from a spring sport to a fall sport making the students have to choose between soccer and their other passion sports such as field hockey, tennis, and cross country. In an interview with field hockey coach Anne Ruiz, she expressed how difficult the moving of girls soccer to the fall made it to get interest from girls to play field hockey.
Kacie Kaough, a sophomore in her second year on the tennis team, had this to say about being a part of such a small team.
“I liked having a smaller team because then you are able to connect and have fun. You are also able to stop to eat on the way back from matches.
I think it adds some more pressure because last year, if all three of us won, we won the whole match. This year, we only have two people playing matches, so we can’t really win a match.
In the past two years but, I have had a really positive experience so far.”
