The Apex High School women’s tennis team is off to an incredible start this season with an almost perfect record. The team practices four days a week and plays two or three matches each week as well, so it’s safe to say these girls are always on the courts. Their hard work has paid off though, and Captain Alyssa Hall shared with us the inside scoop on her experience playing with this amazing team for the past four years.

Hall says the team has changed a lot since her freshman year, detailing, “Every year, the seniors move out and new freshmen come in, so I remember my freshman year being kind of scared of the seniors and never talking to them at all, but I think this year is really awesome because we’re all really close as a team.” As a captain, Hall has planned many bonding activities for the team and reasoned, “What we want is for everyone to have an awesome time. I know I can’t speak for other people, but I think they’ve had a good time, made a lot of new friends, and are having a good experience playing.” Along with the comraderie, Hall explained how flexibility in who plays in matches has been another major change in the team over the past four years. Their conference split after Hall’s freshman year, decreasing some of the competition and thus allowing for more than only the top six team members to compete. 

So far this season, Hall says, “We’re doing great! We lost to Leesville, who’s not in our conference, so it doesn’t count for our conference record. They were a very good team, but we’ve won all of our matches in conference so far. We won a match against Sanderson recently, who is also out of our conference, and that was really close. It was 5-4, and that was our biggest accomplishment because they are the hardest team that we’ve played.” The team aims to keep this momentum going, and Hall exclaimed that this year, “Our goal is to be conference champions because we all know we can do it!”

Hall could not choose a single favorite memory from her time on the team, so she shared an older memory and a more recent one. Last year, every member of the Apex team qualified for the regional tournament in the individual conference held at the end of the season. Hall says this tops her collection of best tennis memories, detailing, “You compete as an individual, and everyone has to earn it themselves, so when we all got to the regional tournament, that was one of the best feelings ever.” Hall also found the team’s recent game against Sanderson extremely memorable because they were tied 4-4, but even under pressure, one of the Apex team members pulled out the win. Hall recounted, “We all knew that we had just won the match because of her, and all of us stormed the court with her still on it and gave her a hug. It was really awesome as a team for us to get to do that.”

Our women’s tennis team is most certainly thriving this season, and everyone should come out and support them at their upcoming matches! Admission is free, and Hall wants Apex students to know, “Tennis is pretty cool to watch, and I think people underestimate that. If people came to watch the matches more, that would be awesome, and they would really enjoy it!” Your support might be just what the team needs to achieve their goal of conference champions this season, so come out and show your Cougar spirit! Congrats to the team on their successful start to this season, and we wish them all the best as it continues!