After a hard-fought battle against Escalon on March 20, 2026, the Ripon High Varsity tennis teams came up just short losing 4-5. The players worked extremely hard through the hot weather, never giving up and putting their all into their matches.
Something that can be seen from this team is they are very focused on what they do. They have quick and fluid movements, helping them to move efficiently across the court. Whether they are in doubles, where they build each other up and talk to each other to ensure they know who needs to get the ball, or singles, where they work on footwork and carefully watch the ball, they play to the best of their ability.
A key doubles team on Friday was sophomores Alyssa Lan and Sophie Douglas. They watched for when the ball was out of bounds carefully and even after missed serves or mistakes, they stayed positive and brought each other up, coming back stronger together. They worked through a second set where they tied 4-4 after winning the first set, leading into a tiebreaker match with the final score of 6-4, helping them win the final match.
Looking back on what they can do to fully gain control of the lead Lan says, “We need to put a lot of effort into the last couple points and just close it off and finish it so we have a higher score in the set.”
Another honorable mention team for Friday’s game was Abby Douglas and Molly Berger, who fought hard for the final, deciding who would win the entire match. They won the first set 7-5, but struggled in the second set where they went 1-6. To finally decide the victor, they went into a third set where it became a tiebreaker.
After the match Abby Douglas reflects on their performance saying, “moving forward, I just want to work on my communication skills with my partner.”
With this fix, they will be able to have quicker reaction times without having any doubts of where their teammate is on the court. While there were losses, there were also personal victories on the team and from this experience, they can all learn and grow to be even better players. Through all this, their hard fought effort kept team morale at a high and even if the final score had been decided, the team went home with a fire in their hearts.
