Throughout most of tennis history, rackets were made of wood.  Heads were around 65 square inches, and some rackets came with fashionable trapezoid-shaped “cases”.  Although graphite composites rackets came out in the early 1980s, Swedish tennis legend Björn Borg tried to stage a comeback in 1985 in Monte Carlo with his standard small-headed wood racket because “he hadn’t tried the new racquets for the simple reason he never used any of those”, and needless to say, it did not go well as he lost 6-2, 6-3.  Also around this time I recall swinging a Prince Woodie that ironically wasn’t made entirely out of wood and might be called a “granny stick” today given its oversized head.  Today, there are a dizzying array of rackets that not only have different head sizes, but also different styles, length, weight, strings, tension (lower creates more power), and many other characteristics.

The Varsity Girls tennis team travelled to Walnut Creek on Thursday with their modern rackets to take on a very tough Las Lomas team, who unfortunately also chose modern rackets as far as I could tell.  On the singles side, Aamena Shipchandler played Line 1 as usual, but since the Dons were missing their Line 2 player, Grace Colaco, Emily Roberts, Sienna Moise, and Nicole Parlett all played up a level, and Parker Grenby stepped up to play Line 6.   Las Lomas managed to secure victories in all of those matches. 

However, the doubles side was an entirely different story as the Dons nearly managed to pull off a sweep.  The Line 1 team of Olivia Dawkins and Lucy O’Brien split the first 2 sets and lost the 3rd set tiebreaker. The Line 2 team of  Lilou Picard and Anna MacLeod and Line 3 team of Ridhi Patel and Lauren Foster both won with identical scores of 6-3, 6-2.  In addition, for the exhibition matches, Jadith LaBonge and Jacqueline Kuhner won 8-6 and Emily Jones and Liv Heglie won 8-5. 

Please come cheer on the team as they return home to take on cross-town rival Miramonte on Tuesday (9/26) at 4pm