Dawg Tennis, LDVB have successful road trips

By TJ MAXWELL
Cove Leader-Press

The Dawg Tennis team had finished second in their trip to the coast over the weekend.
The team went 3-1 to finish second in the Remember Ike Team tennis Tournament in Galveston.
“We went down to Galveston and had a great weekend of tennis,” said Cove head tennis coach Paul Talbett.  “We advanced to the finals and lost a close match to Clear Springs 10-6.”
The Dawgs opened the tournament on Friday with a 10-7 win over Pasadena Dobie before squashing Texas City 17-2 to earn a spot in the semifinals.
The Dawgs took six of the seven doubles matches against Dobie to take a commanding lead into singles where they mustered just enough wins to secure the match.
Noah Samarippa, Ari Diaz and Nick Motely earned the singles’ wins for the boys while Abby Mackwelung earned the sole singles’ win for the girls.
Against Texas City, the Dawgs went nearly unchallenged with easy sweeps in all but three of their wins. Gavin Glick and Samarippa had to work hard to earn wins in singles with wins of (7-6, 1-6, 10-7) and (6-4, 4-6, 10-8), respectively.
Alyssa Gonzales survived 5-7, 6-2, 10-7 in her tiebreaker win.
The Dawgs then edged out Willis 10-8 Saturday morning to earn a spot in the finals against Clear Springs.
The duos of Noah Chapman/Jalen Nix, Diaz/Samarippa and Glick/Motley again swept doubles for the boys while Angie Gorman/Paige Purdum earned a doubles’ win for the girls to take a 4-3 advantage into singles.
The boys again came up big in singles with four of six matches won in straight sets.
Latoya Alokoa and Martha Abraham won their singles’ matches for the girls to push Cove to the 10th win to claim the match.
The Dawgs then fell in a hard-fought 10-6 match to Clear Springs in the title game.
The boys’ held their ground in doubles’ earning another sweep but a girls’ sweep in the opposite direction gave Cove a 4-3 lead going into singles after Abraham and Ethan Hernandez gave Cove the edge in mixed doubles.
Clear Springs then took seven of nine singles’ matches to earn the championship crown.
Diaz fought to a 1-6, 6-4, 10-4 tiebreaker win for the boys and Zamira Manuel battled to a 6-4, 4-6, 10-8 tiebreaker win for the girls.
“We were winning the remaining three matches on the court,” Talbett said about their close loss to Clear Springs.  “It would have ended 10-9 if we played out the match.  We had two third-set tie-breaker losses in singles that could have kept our hopes alive if we could have pulled out one of them.  Our matches on Saturday with Willis and Clear Springs both were over five hours long.”
The 3-1 performance brings Cove’s overall record to 16-9. The Dawgs are 1-1 in District 8-6A action.
“We are really beginning to come together as a team as we move forward in district play,” said Talbett.  On Sept. 5 we lost to Harker Heights 10-9 in a seven-hour match to fall to 1-1 in district play.”
The Lady Dawgs volleyball team also came away successful on their road trip to Belton where they earned a sweep over the Lady Tigers (25-23, 25-14, 25-22) to move to 28-8 overall and 3-0 in District 8-6A with their toughest district tests coming to town Friday in the Waco Midway Pantherettes.
Senior Talia Kinslow and junior Aidan Chace led the offensive attack with aa kills each while junior Jada Close, sophomore Leah Powell and junior Christina Pettigrew had six kills each.
Pettigrew also led the defense in blocks with four.
Leading the offensive flow was setter Kamryn Ash with 23 assists and Chace with 21.
Leading the defensive flow was junior Kristen Wasiak with 18 kills, followed by junior Aviyon Wilborn (15) and Chace (14).
Wilborn also had two aces to lead the team.
The battle for 8-6A supremacy between the only two undefeated teams will have a first serve about 6:30 p.m. Friday with the Lady Dawgs (28-8, 3-0) hosting the Midway Pantherettes (11-13, 3-0). The cove varsity has a bye tonight.