DAWG TENN-ACITY
Fri, 2016-09-09 05:00
News Staff
Dawg Tennis moves to 14-4 with 2-1 weekend
By TJ MAXWELL
Cove Leader-Press
The much-improved Copperas Cove Dawg Tennis team increased their overall season record to 14-4 with a lopsided win over Temple on Friday and a spilt with Bryan and College Station in games that went down to the wire on Saturday.
The Dawgs held off Bryan 10-9 in the morning match but found themselves on the opposite end of a 10-9 score against the top-ranked Tigers of A&M Consolidated in the afternoon match.
The Dawgs began the weekend with a heads-up match at home against Temple where they outplayed the Wildcats by a score of 17-2.
The boys’ side earned a sweep with only one match being close at 8-6 for Gavin Glick over Temple’s Sario Domingo.
“Our boys came up with a 9-0 sweep, which was a great improvement over the first match-up,” said Copperas Cove head tennis coach Paul Talbett. “We played Temple during the first of August and the match ended up a 13-6 win with several close matches. This match gave us a measurement of our improvement, and despite the fact we were missing 2 key girls in our line-up, we had girls step up into the lineup and play great.”
The Dawgs were tested early against the Bryan Vikings, trailing 4-3 after doubles. A strong showing again by the boys, with four wins of their six singles matches, helped the Dawgs pull out the close 10-9 win.
“Bryan, a former district rival, is always a tough match for us,” said Talbett. Against Bryan, we lost three 3rd-set tiebreakers in doubles, leading to us being down 3-4 after doubles. This put us in a situation where we had to pull 7 out of 12 singles matches to win the match and our no. 1 girl was not in the singles lineup.”
Trystan Jackson pulled off a marathon 3rd-set tiebreak win against Temple’s Grant Sococ 4-6, 6-2 (12-10) while Jalen Nix (6-2, 6-4), Nick Motley (6-2, 6-2) and Glick (6-3, 7-6[4]) each earned sweeps. Glick/Nix and Jackson/Motley also earned doubles wins for Cove.
The three girls’ singles wins came from Latoya Alokoa over Lexie Rieger (6-4, 6-3), Zonya Mackwelung over Leslie Donjuan (7-5, 6-3) and Ashley Martinez over Grace Hendrix (7-6[7], 6-3).
“It is good for us to have a match like this at this point of the season to get us playing matches under extreme pressure,” said Talbett. “It was 9-8 when we pulled the last match to get 10, and the last match on was our 3rd-set tiebreak loss. Zonya Mackwelung playing up in the no. 2 spot came up with the big singles win to give us number 10.
“I wanted to point out Ashley Martinez who had the job of stepping into the line-up to replace Tessa Bliss, our number 1 girl. Ashley just returned to the team this week from injury and was thrown into a very tough situation. She came up big, winning all three of her singles matches. On Saturday, both matches were big in allowing us to stay in both matches.”
The Dawgs finished off their weekend with a 10-9 tough loss to A&M Consolidated, ranked in the top 25, and it came down to the wire.
“College Station finished ranked in the top 15 in 5A last year, and they are ranked in the top 25 this year,” said Talbett. “I am proud of how we stepped up and played this afternoon. It was great team tennis - intense and loud. Our team did a great job of putting pressure on College Station with our team tennis atmosphere. We have been working hard on teaching and improving our ability to create a team tennis atmosphere, and today was the best to date.”
Like against their Bryan counterparts, the Dawgs found themselves down 4-3 after doubles and, with a fierce boys’ side for the Tigers, it put pressure on the girls to sweep and hope for the boys to win a match or two.
They did just that. All six Cove girls (Alokoa, Zonya Mackwelung, Abby Mackwelung, Zamira Manuel, Sami Turner and Ashley Martinez) swept their opponents.
“We were in a position to have to pull 7 in singles again,” said Talbett. “We needed a girls sweep and one of our boys to break through. Our girls swept to give us a 9-8 lead with our no. 5 and no. 6 boys’ singles still on the court.”
Both Jackson and Glick battled back from a set down as the last two players on the court for Cove, needing to win at least won to pull off the upset.
Both players forced tie breaks with 7-5 second sets over College Station’s Austin Hatley and Jason Fan, respectively. Jackson succumbed to Hatley at 10-7 in the tiebreak but Glick forced Fan to earn 18 points to win the marathon tiebreak.
“Gavin Glick fought back and forced the 3rd set breaker as well,” said Talbett. “The score was now 9-9, and Gavin knew; it adding to the pressure. The tiebreak lasted about 25 minutes, and Gavin fought off 5 team match points before dropping the 3rd set 18-16. This is about as close a match as you can get. The difference in us winning this match and losing it was literally 1 point.”
The Dawgs faced Taylor at home on Thursday and will travel to Gatesville to face the Hornets with a 4 p.m. start time. Cove finishes the weekend off with another quad match at home with an 8:30 a.m. match against Robinson and a 1:30 p.m. match against Brownwood.
The junior varsity gold team traveled to the greater Austin area to face Pflugerville on Thursday while the JV blue team traveled across town to face district rivals Shoemaker