Girls tennis finish remarkable season, fall short to Hornets in section finals

The Girls Tennis season ended yesterday in an unfortunate loss to the top ranked team in the state, The Edina Hornets, in section play.

The Royals were defeated 6-1 with the only win coming from four singles Carli Wolpert, junior.

The Royals had a phenomenal season this year ending with a ranking of third in the state with a record of 11-3 only losing to Edina, Blake and Mahtomedi in a close match.

The Royals should’ve had a long run through state, but had the unlucky sections matchup against the Hornets to shut the door on a great season.

“Edina is one of the strongest teams in the state, so I personally do not feel bad losing to them. We had several really close individual matches with them, but in the end, the Edina players were able to pull through for their team” said Yelena Hallman, senior.

The Royals will look to rebuild their team for next year as they will be losing five seniors: Ellie Fishman, Sydney Mintalar, Sydney Gottlieb, Yelena Hallman and Sophie Sandler.

“Hopefully we will make it to state next year. Our team is fairly young and we will try to improve to take down Edina,” Wolpert said.

The Royals will now go into individuals section play with two singles players and two pairs of doubles players.

“With individuals coming up, only 6 players for us get to play. Of course, the ultimate goal would be for all of us to get to state, unfortunately that will be very hard to accomplish.” Hallman said.

Most of the Royals players to get to state would have to beat the top ranked Edina players they had lost to yesterday and earlier this year.

The first round of individual section play will start next week Monday Oct. 16.