Seymour drops opener in Hoosier Hills tennis

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Seymour’s tennis team dropped a dual meet at Jeffersonville earlier in the season, so Owls coach Sharon Wood knew it would take an outstanding effort for her team to win its Hoosier Hills Conference Tournament match Monday.

Both teams changed their lineups from the earlier match, but the end result was the same as the Red Devils won 5-0.

“Jeff is very strong this year,” Wood said. “They’re one of the top teams in the rankings. They’ve got a lot of upperclassmen, a lot of players who play year-round tennis. They came out on the court really being able to move the ball right around where they needed to. We were expecting that.”

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Wood hoped the Owls could pick off a point.

“Our goal tonight was to work hard as a team and pick up a win at least in one of the positions, and we certainly gave that a good run,” Wood said. “Hunter Heckman lost in a third-set tie-break 8-10. Two points here or there and we would have had exactly what we were shooting for.”

Heckman battled J.J. Boyles at No. 1 singles with the Owl sophomore winning the first set 6-3 before dropping the second set 6-1.

Owl Reuben Kruse lost 6-0, 6-0 to Max Fisher at No. 2 singles, and Seymour’s Joe Schmidt dropped a 6-0, 6-1 match to Jaden Wells at three singles.

Brandon Hubbard and Andrew Levine fell to Charley Williams and Alex Kelley 6-2, 6-0 at one doubles, while Eli Meyer and Sam Baker lost 6-2, 6-0 to Bryce Vernon and Jordan Wells at No. 2 doubles.

Hubbard was the only senior and Levine the only junior in the Owls’ lineup Monday.

“We’ve got a lot of positions that are still open,” Wood said. “We’ve got a lot of versatile players. Currently the players that were in the lineup tonight are making the progress that we want. However, we still have two or three more options that we’re playing around with to determine our Sectional lineup so it’s going to be who puts in that hard work this last week and a half.

“Can they fix some of the things we’re working on? Can they improve on the consistency of their ground-strokes?”

The players playing the best get into the lineup.

“I like that we’ve got choices,” Wood said. “A lot of teams don’t have that depth that they can make choices. They don’t have a lot of players that can play back-and-forth from singles to doubles, so we’re still looking for some things and we think we’ve got some guys that are really competing hard to get those spots.”

This match began a hectic week for the Owls (5-11). They will host Madison Wednesday in the consolation bracket of the HHC, then host Brownstown Central Thursday and play another HHC match Friday.

“We have a very busy week,” Wood said. “We’ve kind of been waiting for this week. We’ve been looking forward to the conference, most definitely looking forward to Brownstown.

“We keep getting better and stronger each match, each practice, so we’re not done working yet. We’re trying to work our way through this week, get some good experience, good court time and look forward to our sectional next week.”

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