By: Rich Fisher
With the season winding down, the South Brunswick High tennis team is heating up as its lineup has finally gotten settled.
Last Friday’s 5-0 win over Old Bridge and Monday’s 3-2 win over Edison pushed the Vikings win streak to five straight. Their overall record was 11-5 and their Greater Middlesex Conference Red Division mark was 10-4.
"They’re definitely playing their best tennis of the year," coach Barbara Whitman said. "They accepted Christie (Gagliano at first singles) when she came in, and at the same time it challenged them to accept their challenge matches and raise their level of tennis.
"When you have those challenge matches, no one can get complacent. They always want to get better."
While the first doubles team of Meena Ramachandra-Meredith Ragany has been a staple all season, the singles lineup and second doubles were constantly in flux this season. When Gagliano came in two weeks ago, she was the third first singles player the Vikings had.
But after one final round of challenge matches, Gagliano, Poonam Misra and Rachel Amrhein have solidified things at singles, while Smrita Choubey-Rasika Chandrashekar are the second doubles team.
"Everything is in place now," Whitman said. "Our doubles are excellent and we have three solid singles players. If we can pick up a point at singles, we’ll be fine."
That was the case on Monday, as both doubles teams won, and Amrhein came up with a two-set victory over Pam Panahon, 7-5, 6-1.
"Rachel plays very consistently," Whitman said. "She’s very, very patient. The way she plays, other girls can’t play against her because they lose patience."
And while Amrhein is content to wait things out, the doubles teams are working on becoming more aggressive.
"We’ve been working on strategy at doubles," Whitman said. "We’re hitting lobs, going crosscourt and poaching a lot."
Poaching is when the net player quickly blasts a shot back, rather than letting it go to her baseline partner.
"Other teams don’t poach like we do," Whitman said. "We’ve worked on it a lot and it’s really been helping."
The scariest thing about this Viking program could be its future. There is not one senior in the starting lineup, and several members of the JV team had an outstanding Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament.
Divya Toshniwal won the second singles title in the JV tournament, while Veena Raju beat Viking teammate Ambica Buddhavarapu in the third singles finals. IN doubles, Anisha Satyarthi and Parvathi Mukundan reached the semifinals before falling to J.P. Stevens.
"We have a good record now," Whitman said. "And with all the girls we have coming back, it should only get better."
