Story By John Mann
The Albertville Lady Aggies tennis team sailed through the Marshall County Tennis Tournament at Sand Mountain Park on Tuesday, winning on a runaway forty-nine points while taking three singles brackets and two doubles.
“Going in we were a little bit scared of everybody,” Aggies head coach Greg Henderson said. “During the season even though we won all our matches against these teams we had so many close calls. We knew Boaz was good, it sounds crazy because we beat them 8-1 in the regular season but they were close and had chances to win several matches that we were able to pull out. Guntersville has a strong one and two, Arab is a great tournament team and DAR has a defending county champ in number one singles.”
The Aggies took home singles wins in the four, five and six spots. Number four Lydia Mastin, an eighth grader, got a 10-0 win over DAR before taking out Arab in the final match 10-1. Number five freshman Mia Tamez also faced DAR and then Arab, winning with scores of 10-8 and 10-3 respectively. Finally, freshman Kennedy Gladden took the number six singles bracket win, beating out Boaz and Arab with scores of 10-0 and 10-1.
Gladded would come back alongside Amora Gonzales to get the win for number two doubles with the pair winning first over Arab 10-3 and then against Boaz in the final 10-2. Tamez and Mastin would come in and take the number three doubles championship, grabbing wins over Guntersville 10-1 and Arab 10-3.
“I’m really proud of these young ladies,” Henderson said. “They’ve played well all year and they’ve worked hard. They do everything we ask and as a coach that’s all you want, they’re a joy to work with but so is the whole team. Becca Thomas at number one, and number one is hard, she’s really good and works hard as anyone but just had a tough draw, Gonzales our number two played Carlyle (Grace Flanagan, Guntersville) to a 10-8 match and two weeks ago when we played Guntersville it was 10-5 so she really gave it all she had.”
Despite coming in third on a score of twenty-four points the Guntersville Lady Wildcats were able to take both the number one and two spots in singles at the tournament, as well as number one doubles. Outside of Piper Hales of the Boaz Pirates winning number three singles the Wildcats were the only team to get wins apart from Albertville.
Guntersville number one Perry Stewart kicked things off with a win over Boaz 10-3, moving on to take down DAR in the finals 10-3. In the number two singles bracket was Flanagan, who got the win with victories over Boaz 10-3 and Albertville 10-8. Stewart and Flanagan would combine to take the number one doubles win as well, first by knocking out Albertville 10-4 before moving on to the finals against DAR where they came away 10-4.
“I thought our one and two did great,” Wildcats assistant coach Lisa Beam said. “We had lots of close matches but those two came in and won their division and their double. Not everything went out way, it was a real battle for second place which Boaz just ended up winning. After Albertville we were all right there with each other and I could tell we were pretty close in ability. I was proud of our girls and how they did.”
The Aggies will play their sectional tournament next week at Sand Mountain Park starting on April 13, with finals taking place on April 15. The Wildcats and Boaz Pirates will also play sectionals from April 13-15, with play taking place at Boaz High School.
