Girls tennis team prepares for postseason with sweep of Elyria

Not even a change of venue to the pleasant confines of the Avon Oaks Tennis Center could cool the red-hot Avon girls tennis team.

The Eagles played their final Southwestern Conference dual of the season Wednesday, taking on Elyria on the air-conditioned courts at Avon Oaks after the intense heat forced them indoors. Without missing a beat, Avon completed a perfect SWC season for the second year in a row, taking down the Pioneers, 5-0. In fact, every SWC dual for Avon except one has ended with a sweep of all five matches. The lone exception was a 4-1 victory over Amherst.

There are big things on the horizon for the 10-2 Eagles. They will host the SWC tournament on the 12th and the 15th of this month, aiming for their eighth consecutive SWC team title. Avon also has a home match Sept. 11 against Strongsville in the state team tournament. The match against the Mustangs is a state quarterfinal.

“Winning the conference is a definite goal,” said coach Eric Korey. “But a big goal for us right now is the state team tournament. We really want to get to the state final four. Northeast Ohio is the largest district, and it’s really hard to get out of here. No offense to the SWC and Lorain County, but our biggest competition now is Magnificat, Massillon Jackson and Hudson and some of the big perennial teams around the state of Ohio. We want to be in that conversation.”

If the Eagles are able to do so, it will be because of the depth of the program that Korey and his coaching staff have built up through his eight years at Avon.

“In 27 years of coaching, this is the deepest team I have ever coached,” he said. “We have varsity A, varsity B and JV, but what we really have is 20 girls who can play at a varsity level right now. I actually nominated our varsity B team to be ranked in the top eight in Northeast Ohio. There’s a poll that comes out and you rank the teams in your district, and I put our varsity A team fifth and our varsity B team eighth. They’re only varsity B because they play at Avon. If they were almost anywhere else, they would be varsity A.”

On the varsity A level, only first singles player Ashley DeHaven is a senior. Against Elyria, juniors Isabella Gentile and Samantha Gault played second and third singles, respectively, junior Sam Jackson and sophomore Gracie Gedeon played first doubles and sophomore Nora Fiest and junior Karina Marsden played second doubles. All won by scores of 6-0, 6-0 except for Gentile, who won 6-1, 6-0.

The Eagles won the SWC crown last year without a senior in the lineup, so this season’s success has come as no surprise.

“I’ve seen this coming for a couple of years, and I’ve been stressed for this year,” Korey said. “It’s an excitement, but still a stress, too. I wanted to have the right schedule set. We have so many kids who have dedicated so much time and effort and money to this sport, and it’s hard to get them enough playing time at their level. It’s why we started varsity B several years ago because I didn’t want those kids playing JV. And now our JV team is super strong as well.”

While Korey has sometimes struggled with having so many quality players, he also has enjoyed the versatility that such depth brings.

“It’s not like football where you can sub, or basketball, where you have five starters and then you have your bench play,” he said. “But I’ve changed our lineup around. In fact, we haven’t used the same lineup twice this season. Ashley has been our first singles player the majority of the time. Sam Jackson has been first doubles the majority of the time. But aside from that, we have some good moving parts, which makes us super versatile. No one ever knows what lineup they’re going to see.”

While DeHaven was the only senior who took the court against Elyria, there are five other 12th-graders in the program, all of whom Korey said have provided guidance for their teammates.

“We have six seniors,” he said. “Ashley is at the top, and a lot of our varsity B girls are seniors. We have six great seniors who have really left their mark on the program. It’s always so hard to say goodbye to our seniors. Not only are they good tennis players, but they’re good leaders. The younger girls look up to all of them. It’s such a wonderful thing.”