This season the girls’ tennis team has surprised many and exceeded expectations. “We have had a really fun season in tennis this year. I think going into the season a lot of people weren’t too excited because they knew our team wouldn’t be as good as last year’s, but we’ve surprised people with our play,” junior Anna Greenwald said. “Everyone has been working very hard in the off-season and during this season to be where we are now and I think we are all proud of our hard work and accomplishments.” Greenwald plays number three in singles and number one in doubles, along with junior Mandy Winkleblack. This season the girls’ tennis team is 8-2, with only Greenwald, Winkleblack, and sophomore Frances Xin returning from last year’s varsity. “We’ve done a lot better than I expected, I mean, we lost a lot of strong players, so I thought it would be really difficult,” Xin said. Xin is number one in singles for the team and number two in doubles along with fellow sophomore Leigh Howell. This year the team has encountered both strong wins and tough losses, too. “We had a hard loss to Fort Dodge this year. They are a very talented team and last year we beat them 6-5 to be conference champions so we were pretty disappointed that we couldn’t do the same thing this year.” Greenwald said. “We also lost a very close match to Valley this year which was disappointing because you always want to beat Valley, but they had a good team and we were unfortunately not able to pull it off.” The team did, however, manage to win against strong teams like Urbandale and Marshalltown. The team is already striving to improve for next year, too. “We need to keep up the hard work and get a little more experience.” Xin said. Already having exceeded many of the expectations for this season, the team seems to be on the right track. All in all, the girls‘ tennis team has had a great season, “It has been really exciting to see everyone step it up and take our games to a new level. We’ve had a lot of players who have stepped it up and brought their playing ability to a new level.” Greenwald said.