Knights duo ends high school career at District Tournament
By Jenna Polen
October 22, 2012
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Coming into their senior year, Chelsea Black and Hannah Frank teamed up for one common goal getting to the Ohio High School Athletic Association girls tennis District tournament, which was held on Wednesday Oct. 10 at Ohio University in Athens.
Black and Frank spent the entire season preparing for the sectional tournament, where they won two straight rounds to make it to Athens, besting both the Claymont and Dover doubles teams.
I knew that we really needed to work on being more aggressive at the net and I needed to work on my groundstrokes, so thats what we focused on before coming to districts, said Frank.
The doubles duo headed into districts as the second seed from the sectional, after losing a tough seeding match against Dovers doubles team of senior Kourtnie Kourie and sophomore Sierra Sandy.
The second seed wasnt enough for West Holmes to come out on top in District play, as they fell to a third seeded doubles duo from Waverly High School, 1-6, 0-6.
Im excited that I got to this point in the tournament, obviously I really wanted to win, but being here is a big accomplishment, said Frank on qualifying for Districts. Im sad that the season is over now and that it ended with this loss. I am thinking about playing tennis in college, though, but Im not sure yet.
Maybe it was the powerful contender from the Waverly team, or one too many errors that brought the Knights down in their last match of the season.
There was definitely a stronger player on the opposing team that took charge of the match. Hannah and Chelsea gave away easy volleys and allowed a lot of unforced errors that got the best of them during the match, said head coach, Jason Otto. They had a really good year playing together; they started out 7-0 and then played some rough teams which helped them prepare for the District Tournament.
Overall, accomplishing a trip to Districts was their main goal, but many other highlights came out of the season, which included winning the West Holmes Invite, placing third at the tough Ohio Cardinal Conference tournament, and coming into sectionals as the first seed.
My last season on the tennis team was awesome, coming to Districts and playing was one of my goals I gave our coach and Im so happy that I got to accomplish that, said Black. Playing with Hannah all year long at first doubles really allowed us to understand each others strengths and use them to our advantage.
Along with Black and Frank, senior Rachel Nelson made the trip to Districts. Nelson advanced to claim yet another appearance in the OHSAA State Girls Tennis Tournament. The State Tournament will be held at the Stickney Tennis Center on the campus of the Ohio State University, on Friday Oct. 19 and Saturday Oct. 20.
