Cheney Team Faces Year Of Rebuilding
FROM SOUTH SIDE VOICE page C3 (Thursday, March 20, 1997): Corrections Junior Adam Olp is a member of the Cheney boys tennis team. His name was misspelled in last Thursday’s South Side Voice.
West Plains tennis
Cheney boys tennis coach Jeff Butler, whose team was second in the Frontier League last year but lost four players to graduation, expects a rebuilding year. “I’m just hoping that everybody else is as inexperienced as we are and we’ll be able to slip in there,” said Butler.
It’s much the same story on the Cheney girls’ side, where coach Craig Austin lost five players, including three All-Frontier League singles players. Last year the Blackhawks finished fifth.
“I would call it an adjustment year,” said Austin, explaining that three players are likely to move from doubles play into the singles rotation.
At Medical Lake, where the boys team has won five straight Northeast A championships, the Cardinals return their top singles player.
Senior Josh Greene was third at state a year ago and is one of the league’s best. After that, says coach LeRoy Lemaster, it’s anybody’s guess how the ML rotation will look.
“My group is just so close, it’s going to be whoever wants it,” Lemaster said. The Medical Lake girls tennis team tied for the league title with archrival Lakeside last season. Lakeside figures to be good again, Cardinal coach Debbie Smith said, and the addition of a tennis team from Chewelah to the league provides for something of a wild card.
Still, the Cardinals graduated only three varsity players from a year ago.
“I think we’ll be right in there this year,” Smith said.
Spending last spring at the Cheney boys’ No. 3 singles spot served only to whet junior Brian Eggart’s appetite for more. “I have high hopes for him,” coach Butler said of the Blackhawks’ expected No. 1.
Three more juniors - Chung Wei Kuo, Adam Olt and Paul Moberly - as well as a senior, Devin Otto, return to the team with doubles experience.
Looking the rest of the league, Butler said perennially strong Pullman looks like it could again challenge for the title.
“Other than that, your guess is as good as any,” he said.
With some 20 freshman out for the Cheney girls team, coach Austin’s sights are set firmly in the future. At the same time, the rest of the Frontier League may be nearly as experienced as the Blackhawks are.
“We have a lot of freshman and sophomores, so when you have that it pleases you to think where you’re going to be in a year or so,” Austin said. Senior Keri Fockler most likely will move up from the No. 4 singles spot to No. 1, while a handful of other players, including seniors Sara Rodgers, Julie George, Julie Brown, and junior Kim Higbee will vie for remaining singles spots.
ML coach Lemaster said he first saw Josh Greene play as a seventh-grader, when he was still juggling tennis with soccer. “I told him, ‘I hate to tell you this, Josh, but you’re a tennis player,”’ Lemaster says. “He just had that natural flow.”
Greene is joined by a host of returning players, including seniors Josh Bailey and Jason Thomas, No. 2 doubles last year, and Chris Hancock and Matt Deutsch, No. 3 doubles a year ago. Juniors Tim Cooper, Aaron Parlin and Josh Mastell and sophomores Joe Braun and Marty Hardin are all in the hunt for singles spots.
Jeff Racicot, a state placer in wrestling, joins the team this year. Lemaster expects him to vie for varsity positions with senior Jim Schmidt and sophomore Ryan Audett.
Challenges matches among Medical girls team players Sara Cotton, a sophomore who worked up from the bottom of the junior varsity ladder last year to the Cardinal’s No. 1 spot, and senior Kim Cuellar, last year’s No. 2, are expected to provide plenty of drama at practices.
In all, 21 turned out, including returning doubles players Beth Bow, Amber Duby and Christy Silva, all juniors, and senior Jenn Meader.