Serving Up Potential

The Polson High School boys’ and girls’ tennis teams have experienced significant changes from last season, with a reduction in team size from nearly 30 to 23 members on the girls’ team and only about 17 on the boys’ team. Additionally, there are only four returning seniors meaning that the underclassmen play a vital role in the results of this season. Despite these circumstances, their coach commends their hard work and dedication when it comes to teamwork and improving on technique. Varsity Player Ruger Ellis said, “With these open spaces, it allows players to play at a higher level than they’re used to and work harder than before.” The teams aim to improve their skills and make it far at divisionals so they can attend state in Billings May 22-24. 

The amount of underclassmen on the teams is both refreshing and a setback for the teams’ success. The girls’ tennis team hasn’t had a losing season in 20 plus years so the underlying goal for the girls is to have another winning season. Head Coach Robert Hislop said, “This year that’s probably not the case. In years when you’re not as good, you feel like you’ve failed. So you set your goals and go forward and try to reach them, which they’ve handled beautifully.” When players are struggling, the coaches will try to set them up with somebody that’s beatable. Hislop said, “One of the best ways to become a winner is to play people you can beat.” 

Hislop has been coaching sports for 43 years. He was a sports nut when in high school and almost immediately started coaching Little League Baseball. When he went to college, he had the opportunity to coach at different levels. He was hired as a coach at the first school he taught at in eastern Montana. Since then, he has mainly coached basketball, tennis, and track. He describes the outlook he takes on each season, saying, “The biggest thing is my enthusiasm towards the practices…One of the things we pride ourselves in is that we coach everybody. We just want to give them lifetime support and teach them to have a blast.” Assistant Coach Michael Sitter said, “Mr Hislop’s passion for tennis is second to none. I think if he cut his finger he would bleed tennis. He is professional, respectful, responsible, driven, supremely knowledgeable, and has the kids' best interest at the forefront.” This season, Hislop coached his thousandth tennis match, to which Sitter added that Polson tennis would not have reached the heights it has if it were not for Mr. Hislop.

 A couple years ago there were several returning varsity players on the boys’ tennis team, but now it has completely flipped, where Ellis is the only person that’s been on the boys varsity team for more than two years. He made the team his freshman year and said they were really good that year, eventually winning state. At that time he was one of the only underclassmen on the team, whereas now he is one of the few upperclassmen. A major difference from last year is losing all-state players and having to adapt to a team that is so young, shared Ellis. He explained, “We’re not doing badly, but we’re not better than last year, because we did really well last year. We’ve done a pretty good job of adapting to the new circumstances.” Summer Newman, the only senior on the girls’ team said, “We’re maturing really fast for being a young team. Hopefully we grow the program even more. Even this season is a fluke of how many people we have.” Since a lot of the players on the team are so young, there isn’t a lot of experience behind them; however, the progress they’ve made this season will be promising for the teams’ future prospects.

Greta Lund, a sophomore on the girls’ team, made varsity her freshman year. Whenever she could, she would play tennis. It paid off when she challenged someone on varsity and took their spot. As an underclassman on the team last year and this year, she says the team lost a lot of good upperclassmen players when they graduated after last season, and since there are a lot of younger people on the team it’s more of a building year than a ‘better than last year’ year. Hislop finds having a large number of underclassmen on the team to be thrilling. He said, “It’s very fun because then you’re doing a lot of the very basics of tennis. From there you just keep working your way up.” Additionally, freshman Zayne Newman made the boys’ varsity tennis team this year and said while there aren't a lot of them, “I think the upperclassmen do a really good job at keeping everybody organized. Everyone plays a part in helping out and getting information around if it’s needed.” While he thinks the team has been playing fairly well this season, because they have a small number of upperclassmen, and everybody’s kind of new, they're trying to build from the ground up.

Winning state is a tall order for the new teams. Ellis said winning state would entail taking accountability, working hard, and being self-aware as a team of what they need to work on: “We have to ask ourselves, are you at your full potential? Do you need to work harder? How can you help yourself or ask help from others to achieve those goals that I know we can.” Since losing a lot of doubles players, Hislop said it’s one of the areas he wants to grow a lot. Ellis, although he plays both, prefers singles because, “In singles you don’t ever have to worry about letting someone down or relying on someone else.” However, he shared, some people like doubles more because they get to play with another person. Speaking of her doubles partner, Lund said, “The best thing we can do is talk to each other. Hislop says we talk a lot.” Typically during practice, doubles players have the opportunity to practice directly with their doubles partners. This gives them insight to what their partner is good at and what things work for their partnership.

The varsity girls’ and boys’ tennis teams had divisionals in Libby from May 15-17. Boys qualifying for state included Ruger Ellis (singles), Branson Moss, and Teague McElwee (doubles). To advance, players could lose no more than one match. Overall, Ellis placed 4th in singles, and Moss, and McElwee placed 3rd in doubles. On the girls’ team, Greta Lund, Hinkley Moss (doubles), and Summer Newman (singles) qualified for state. Newman placed 2nd in singles due to a forfeit because of injury, and Lund and Moss placed 3rd in doubles. Although he didn’t make it to state, Varsity boys’ tennis player Marcus Lucas said, “I think that we (both teams) had it in us the whole time. We’re proud of how many people made it to state. Although we would’ve loved it if more people made it.” In Lucas’ disqualifying match, he played 3 sets in total in which two of them were ties. In the last set he lost the tie breaker and therefore was out of the divisionals tournament. He said, “I wasn’t the only one with a hard match. During divisionals, it was more of a learning experience for a lot of players. We all showed strong performance.” Almost all of the players at divisionals went out after playing 3 sets, which highlighted their proximity to making state.

The strong turnout of underclassmen this season means more returning players next year. As she finishes up her last season, Newman encourages more people to join the team, saying, “It’s awesome how we can come together and support each other.” Hislop is enthusiastic about how the teams will do next year. He thinks if players put in work during the off-season, they are bound to improve.