Girls Tennis Team Shows Mettle, Falls Short in Season Opener

The Hopatcong girls tennis team tried hard, but didn't start 2010 the way it hoped.

The Chiefs fell to the Morristown-Beard, 5-0, on Monday on the road.

Traci Duffy, in her 12th year as Hopatcong's coach, has been through the ups and downs with her tennis squad.  But she wasn't too disappointed with the effort her girls showed, even if it didn't immediately produce results.

"I am proud," Duffy said.  "The Morristown-Beard girls are an 'up' team.  It's good for us to face them, rather than an evenly matched team.  Our girls have just been playing matches against each other until now.  But they all definitely tried hard."

The three singles girls, Haley Kearns, Ashley Facciola, and Allie-Rose Pluskota, all lost in two sets to their Morristown-Beard opponents, winning only two games in all three matches combined.  Kearns, the first-team singles player, didn't show much disappointment or loss of confidence for the rest of the season.

"I tried," said Kearns, a senior.  "I don't think the rest of the girls we play this year will be this tough."

The Chiefs lost both doubles matches, too, but Duffy was impressed with how they battled.

"Both of my doubles teams, it's the first time they've competed with each other," Duffy said. 

The tandem of Kayla Coolican and Kate Kearns was notably impressive.  They pushed the second set of their match to nine games, eventually losing, 6-3, after losing, 6-0, in the first set.  Duffy was impressed with how they were holding their own. 

"You know what I love about them, is that they're really paying attention," Duffy said during their competitive second set.  "They're plugging up holes, and instead of making unforced errors, they're capitalizing on [Morristown-Beard's] mistakes."

Coolican said that even though she and the younger Kearns didn't win the match, they still put up one heck of a fight.

"It's not about leaving the match with the mindset that you could've won if you had tried harder," Coolican said.   "It's about learning from your mistakes and fixing them."

The girls will get almost a week of practice and rest, as they won't have another match until their first home match of the season against Newton on Monday at 4 p.m.  at the Civic Center.