Columbus North No. 1 singles player Aya Sand returns the ball during Thursday’s match against Columbus East at Columbus East High School.
Tommy Walker | For The Republic
The Columbus North girls tennis team didn’t take long defeating its crosstown rival Columbus East 5-0 Thursday night at East in the season opener for both teams.
Before the match started, the Bull Dogs had an early 1-0 lead in the match via an Olympian forfeit at No. 3 singles.
North’s top player and defending state singles champion Kathryn Wilson sat out Thursday’s match, so it gave North coach Kendal Hammel an opportunity to play other girls that normally wouldn’t have a lot of playing time on the court and hitting tennis balls with each other daily.
“We’ve got some good strength coming back. I didn’t use the whole strength today. I didn’t have Kathryn play, and with the No. 3 default, I just gave other people a chance to play some. We’ll learn a lot more in the next few matches,” Hammel said. “It was nice to get that first match in with decent weather and the chance to play some and see how it goes from there.”
At No. 1 singles, the Bull Dogs’ Aya Saad topped Sara Moran 6-1, 6-0.
North’s Lison Cloteaux defeated Emily Zhu at No. 2 singles, Annabelle Sun and Lucy Bergman defeated Zoe White and Lillian Smith at No. 1 doubles and Grace Conner and Lizzie Bodart defeated Bruna Carreira and Luci Morales at No. 2 doubles, all by 6-0, 6-0 scores.
East coach Adam Ulrich liked what he saw from his team today, regardless of what the final score indicated.
“I felt like they played really well. A couple of our girls have never played before, so this was their very first match ever,” Ulrich said. “I felt like they exceeded my expectations for the first match. They play hard, and they tried to do everything we worked on in practice and I’m really anticipating and looking forward to what the rest of the season is going to bring for us.”
The North-East match normally is played on the second Monday in April. Since that date was the same day when the total solar eclipse occurs, it was moved up to Thursday.
