Apaches tennis program building for future success

GONZALES — After a successful weekend at San Antonio, the Apache tennis program is off to a good start, according to head coach Sarah Kennedy (previously named Sarah Moreno).

That tournament and the recent practices have given Kennedy high hopes for this upcoming season.

“I have pretty high expectations,” Kennedy said. “We have a really young group but I think they’ll go a little ways farther than last year. They still have a lot to learn, we’re still in the process of building and kind of reshaping the program in a sense.”

After graduating seven seniors, the Apache tennis team will be looking towards their youth to help build the program up. This year, all eyes will be on mixed doubles and girls singles.

“We have Fernando Ontiveros with Shenan Owens and then Lucero Luna with Zachary Hernandez,” Kennedy said. “Usually mixed double teams are weaker but in my case they’re actually my strongest teams right now.”

Another bright spot for the Apaches will be junior Alex Finch who went to regionals as a freshman, except in girls doubles.

“She’s playing singles this year but she is one of our stronger players,” Kennedy claimed. “We’re definitely expecting some results.”

Last season was Finch’s first year as a singles player.

One of the slots Kennedy has been trying to fill this year has been in boys singles. Despite the amount of boys in the tennis program, Kennedy has had trouble filling up places in the boys singles division.

“I don’t know but we don’t have very many that want to play boys singles,” Kennedy said. “It’s kind of tricky because you want to put them in spots they’re comfortable in but at the same time I want to fill up all my slots and not have extra kids trying to get in or wait.”

“That’s where we’re pretty weak right now, at boys singles. They’re not many that are skilled there that are playing boys singles.”

Despite the youth and lack of a boys singles player, Kennedy is looking forward to this season as the start of the building process for the future program.

“There’s a lot of freshmen who played last year as eighth graders and they did really well,” Kennedy recalled. “As eight graders, we did really well at district and so seeing them come up mixing with the older experienced kids, I’m excited.”

“We have more kids in this tennis program this year than we did last year so that’s a great thing. It’s a great problem to have too many entries for a tournament.”

As for building the program, Kennedy believes that building from the ground up will lead to long-term success.

“I started a pretty strict program when they came in last year that kind of set the standard. We’re kind of building from the young up. They’re taking that and building on it each year.”