MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Trinity High School girls tennis team just put together its best regular season in recent history.
Wednesday afternoon, the sixth-ranked Pioneers extended that success, opening the playoffs with a 6-3 home victory over visiting Berlin, which entered the Division III tournament as the No. 11 seed.
“This is the first time we’ve made the playoffs through merit since I’ve been here since last year everyone made the playoffs,” said fourth-year Trinity head coach Derick Alexandere.”So this is exciting because we really get along together and have good camaraderie, and just to make it this far was an achievement, and now we’ve won one and are onto the semifinals.”
Leading that charge, atop the Trinity ladder is Mallory Hobausz, who earned an 8-4 singles win Wednesday.
While No. 2 Harley Plasz and No. 4 Ava Prieto were each narrowly defeated, 8-5, No. 3, Katie Mulcahy earned an 8-4 win, and No. 5 Dakota Correia and No. 6 Samantha Ashooh followed suit with 8-1 and 8-2 wins, respectively, to provide the Pioneers a 4-2 edge heading into doubles action.
There, Hobausz and Plasz fell in a 9-8 (7-5) nail biter, before Prieto and Frances Davalos earned an 8-6 win on the second court to secure the team victory, and Mulcahy and Meddy O’Mara closed out the day with an 8-2 win on court No. 3.
Next up for the Pioneers is third-ranked Littleton, which finished the regular season with a 13-1 record.
“We’re hoping we can be really competitive and maybe pull off an upset,” said Alexandere. “We’ll see what we can do up there.”
Win or lose, Alexandere said he’s been really impressed with his team’s progress this season.
“My first year we only had two wins, my second full season we had four wins and now we’re 9-4, so we’ve made a lot of progress,” he said. “We had a couple really good freshmen who have a lot of experience come in to replace some seniors and they’ve actually been No. 1 and No. 2 on our ladder. They’ve been terrific.”
Hobausz, who played No. 2 for most of the season, went 11-2 during the regular season and is very aggressive in front of the net and rarely makes an error, said Alexandere, while Hobausz’s freshman classmate Meredith MacWilliam, who competed on the top court during the regular season before suffering an injury, brings strong intangibles throughout her play.
In addition, Alexandere said he was also able to add some other athletes, such as Mulcahy, a former lacrosse player, who have picked the game up quickly this season and anticipates additional talent and depth being added to the team in the coming seasons.
“With one person graduating, and we have a couple eighth graders coming in with experience next year, we think over the next couple years, with a young team, that we can really improve and maybe win the state championship in a year or two,” he said.
