Hop Tops KO at home this afternoon

We'd had our eye on this match for a quite a while. KO won New Englands in the B Division last year, where we will be competing at the end of May. Although chomping at the bit to face the Wyvern squad, we had to settle for a wash-out on Monday, so our spirits were roiling to see them on our courts, and we were glad to get a quick re-schedule in. Today, we feared the worst again as snow, some hail and rain fell intermittently for an hour or so before the match was to begin. "Luckily" it was windy too and the courts were drying fast enough for us not to doubt that we would play. 

Even though you lose to Melissa Lord, she is such an extraordinary and sportsmanlike player, it's not an all told negative experience. She really is a phenomenon and we wish her all the best at Stanford next year, where our own Nolan Page is studying and playing. Marion fought out several great points with her. Our Sr. Captains also had very good matches today in spite of not bringing the wins home. All three of our doubles teams mandated quick and serious wins against their opponents, so about two hours in to the afternoon, it came down to Julia Bartimer playing at 3 singles to break the 3-3 tie. After a 6-1 first set for Julia, her opponent seemed to gain resilience, and she tied up the second set at 6 all. Julia's body language showed us however that she was having nothing but the win for Hop, and she proceeded to dominate the tie break with a hugely convincing 7-, giving us the 4-3 win.

Coach Mike and I are so proud of each and every one of the girls' hard work and committed investment in improvement, always playing one's best, focus and let us not forget, enjoying what we're doing. Today's win was well-earned and fabulous feather in the girls' hats. And thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the fans and families that came out to watch and huddle under what blankets we could provide! It really made a difference to us that you were there.