Tennis team sees success early in season

The Green River High School tennis teams are hitting their stride.

Though the pandemic has taken quite a tole on school functions and activities, GRHS coaches and athletes couldn’t be more excited to get into the season.

According to Phil Harder, the head coach, the team has five senior athletes on the girls team and seven senior players on the boys team, as well as a hand full of returning players.

He said players are looking forward to showing other teams just how ready they are to get into the competitions. Having the returning varsity hungry to show their experience is a great asset to the newer members of the team.

While Harder describes tennis as a social distance sport, the pandemic still had some affects on the team’s functionality. Harder ensures that he, along with the other coaches and athletes, are abiding by school and state laws in order to keep everyone safe. Each member of the team was issued a mask that is to be worn whenever maintaining a 6-foot distance from each other is not possible. Coaches have also been breaking the team up into sections and having kids practice in smaller groups at different tennis courts in Green River.

The team works on fundamentals, strategy, safety and other important skills during practices. Average practices are made up of a little bit of everything as there is no time to be falling behind.

Harder, along with other coaches and athletes are hoping for a complete season this year.

Students have worked hard to maintain their fitness and skills to not be able to finish the season. For the time being the biggest hope for the season is not to have any COVID-19 shut downs.

Harder’s biggest hope is that all sports get to play this year. He knows how hard student athletes work and believes they deserve a chance to show off the skills they have developed. He believes there is a lot of time and effort that goes into high school sports and that the pandemic is only going to add more time and effort to them. However he feels it is still better to have some extra rules and added stress, then to not be able to play at all.