Fourth as a team. A UP champion in number four doubles. It’s safe to say the Munising tennis team had quite the day at the Division 2 UP finals at Iron Mountain on Wednesday, October 2.
“We did great at UP finals, all of the kids played their hardest,” head coach Abbie Hayes said.
As a team they tallied nine total points; giving them fourth place overall and just one point out of third place.
The highlight of the day was the number four doubles team of Lauren Nelson and Maddy Knuttila winning their flight to become UP champions. They dominated the championship match, defeating the West Iron County duo of Vivian Holm and Jenna Sunn 6-2 and 6-2.
“It was super exciting to see them win and to see how excited they were,” Hayes said. “For Lauren it was her last match so it was awesome to see her end four years of tennis as a UP champ. This is Maddy’s first year so giving her that confidence going into next season is amazing.”
Other highlights included Jolie Akie taking second place in number four singles, number two doubles Tessa Salo and Tamryn Nolan also finishing second and number one doubles Dayne Behning and Kate Mattson as well as the number three doubles team of Kinley Hall and Keira Albright making as far as the semi-finals.
All told it was a bit of a marathon of a day, but one that was quite rewarding for the team.
“It was an extremely long day for the girls,” Hayes said. “We left at 6:15 a.m. and the strength of the wind was something the girls have not really played in much. With all the challenges and obstacles the girls faced that day, they did amazing and we had a wonderful day to end our season. We were all pretty tired after the 15 hour day though.”
The Mustangs will now look forward to next season where they’ll look to reload after seeing a large group of seniors depart the team after graduation.
“Looking into next year, we’re losing a lot of seniors who make up a majority of our team,” Hayes said. “With that being said we really need to get some of the incoming freshmen and anyone else we can to make sure we have a full team next year. We have a very strong group that will be coming back and they will definitely be ready to go.”
