Girls Tennis 13–2 grotoniana
What began as a scattered group with promise developed into an outstanding tennis team this spring, which finished second in the Independent School League. A solid core of six returning Fifth and Sixth Formers (Katherine McCreery, Sunny Chai, Annie McCreery, Charlotte Mellgard, Claire Peabody, and Jessica Saunders) joined a handful of Lower Schoolers (Gloria Hui, Elechi Egwuekwe, Catherine Qiao, Marianne Lu, and Sangah Lee) who were new to Groton but certainly not new to tennis. It took some time for this disparate group to pull together, but before long they looked like one big Groton team, supporting each other as they worked hard in practice and competed with confidence. An early, narrow win over Deerfield and an equally narrow loss to Andover brought the team’s record to 2–1, but by the time the seeding for New Englands was done, Groton had run off ten consecutive victories, including impressive wins over perennial powerhouses
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Groton School Quarterly
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Fall 2015
Thayer and Nobles. On the strength of that record, Groton was named the third seed in the Class A New England Championship and made the trip out to Hotchkiss to live up to that high billing, beating Hotchkiss before being put out by an impressive Andover team. After the tournament, the team suffered only its second regular-season loss (to an otherworldly Milton team) before finishing with a solid, satisfying win over a much-improved St. Mark’s squad. By season’s end, this group had developed great team spirit, exemplified by how enthusiastically the players pulled for each other, match after match, even as they took turns sitting out of the playing lineup. This is an impressive note worth explaining, since it won’t show up in the record books: The Groton team was so strong and deep this year that they achieved their remarkable record even while sharing playing time from match to match. All eleven players competed in singles at some point during the season, and all eleven also competed in doubles. Whatever list of
names appeared on the lineup on any given day, the Groton players on court never failed to compete both fairly and well, earning the respect of teammates and opponents alike. Future teams will miss Co-captains Katherine McCreery and Annie McCreery and fellow Sixth Former Charlotte Mellgard, and will owe these three a debt of gratitude for injecting the spirit of Groton tennis into a group of new players this year. — Coach Dave Prockop P’15, ’17
Boys Tennis 10–5 The boys tennis team finished the season with ten wins, including a thrilling 4–3 victory against Deerfield to begin the spring and a 10–5 triumph against archrival Milton in the last week of the season. With strong leadership from Captain Robert Gooch ’15, the boys earned many points throughout the lineup. MacGregor Beatty ’17, Michael You ’16, Sam Girian ’18, Peter White ’15, Nico Davidoff ’17, and Aaron Jin ’19