Despite the absence of a second coach from preseason till the last week of the season, and the lack of support the 15-member team received from the Parker community in game attendance, the girls tennis team persisted.

The team lost its assistant coach Alice Tebbutt early August, and gained back an assistant, Matthew Roffe in early, which led in the interim to problems with their practices, according to Nicole Feitler, one of the two freshmen on the team. “I do really love the tennis team, but some aspects of it are a little bit underdeveloped,” Feitler said. “For example, towards the middle of the season, we lost our assistant coach, and it took a little while to replace her. It was hard only having one coach when we have two completely different skill levels–JV and Varsity. I felt that we weren’t getting the most out of our practices, but once we finally got our new assistant coach, there was more successful practices.”

The loss of an assistant coach resulted in the head coach placing more responsibilities on captains senior Isabel Saltzman and senior Katherine Leonard. “The coach relied on me a little more,” Saltzman said. “I had to be excited for practice and motivated so the team could be motivated. When people were upset that there was only one coach and that not all the players were getting equal attention, I had to cheer them up and encourage them. I had to organize snacks, and my co-captain was sick for a week and a half, which was difficult.”

The process of finding a new assistant coach for the team was a tough task for the athletics department. “Immediately after we got the news from Alice, we jumped into action to find a new coach,” Athletic Director Bobby Starks said. “We didn’t want this situation to cause stress for the head coach or our student athletes, but it’s tough to hire somebody mid-season. Coaches that would be available are already coaching, so it took us longer than we would have liked. Fortunately, we found our coach, and he’s a familiar face – Coach Matthew Roffe. The team has responded well to his coaching and our head coach, Amy Roberts, has been doing a great job, and we are glad we have solidified the head coach position.”

Although the departure of the assistant coach created a problem for the team, this wasn’t the only obstacle the team faced. “Attendance has been a bit of a bump in the road,” Saltzman said. “It was hard for one coach to handle attendance, getting us to the games, and getting everyone to show up. Getting everyone to show up is a challenge that we face every year, because players don’t really commit to the team like they should. This means our players often change between Varsity and JV.”

The tennis team doesn’t receive a lot of support from the Parker community, according to Feitler. Typically, Parker students don’t go out and watch tennis matches, or show much interest in the sport in general. To be fair, the tennis team is small – drawing 15 total players compared to the 55 that play field hockey. “We’ve learned to deal with the lack of support from the students, because we have each other, and everyone supports each other,” Feitler said. “It is upsetting, because we’ve all worked just as hard as the other sports teams, and it’s hard to not have many classmates support us.”

Starks is also unhappy with the lack of support the team receives. “It’s tough,” he said. “I think every team enjoys fans cheering them on. It’s tough for not only tennis, but also golf and cross country because they don’t have a home field. It’s hard to get parents, fans, and students out to go see the games because it’s out of their way. I don’t love the fact that we haven’t figured that out yet, but we’ve started to try to get our student athletes to come support the tennis team.”

Like many other Parker students, freshman Lauren Hughes has never been to a Parker tennis match, even though she has friends on the team. “I don’t go to tennis matches because they are far away, which is really inconvenient,” Hughes said. “Also, the tennis matches conflict with my field hockey schedule, so I’m not able to go.”

Despite these problems, the team has recently made improvements. “Our transportation has gotten a lot better – it’s always on time,” Saltzman said. “Last year, sometimes we couldn’t even get to practice because we had no way of getting there. Once parents had to pick us up and drive us to a match because the bus didn’t show up. We’ve had to share buses with Latin and waste lots of time we could have spent practicing.”

Improving transportation for the tennis team was a priority for Starks as soon as he was hired. “When I was hired a year ago, transportation was a topic that I heard from student athletes that we needed to improve,” Starks said. “I think we’ve found a great new bus company – Infinity Transportation – and they have been doing a great job. We transport the tennis team to practice at Waveland every day.”

Saltzman has watched the team develop throughout her four years of playing and has high hopes for the future. “ I hope that the freshmen can be captains in four years and lead the team with the enthusiasm and excitement that I did,” Saltzman said. “Also, I hope the team will grow and more people will join and that we’ll have a consistent coach that can stay for at least four years.”

Starks has plans to improve the team. “The biggest improvement for us to make is to monitor the coaching situation and ensure that the student athletes have two great coaches to enable our student athletes to grow and improve,” he said. “We want to support our student athletes as much as we can.”