Friday’s Ankeny Quadrangular girls’ tennis tournament didn’t go as planned due to the rain.
“We started our first meet in Ankeny against undefeated Marshalltown, but the rain forced us to move to Iowa State’s bubble and limited the event to just that meet,” said Ankeny coach Steve Smith, whose team was also slated to play Dallas Center-Grimes and Southeast Polk. “The best laid plans definitely went awry.”
After traveling to Ames, the Hawkettes dropped a 7-4 decision to Marshalltown. The Bobcats (9-0) won four of the five doubles matches to earn the win after the two teams split the six singles matches.
“It was pretty cool to play at ISU’s facility, which was definitely louder than playing outdoors in Ankeny,” Smith said.
Ankeny (3-5) got singles wins from Kira Smith at the No. 1 position, Sophie Schmitz at No. 3 and Satviki Gorrela at No. 6. Gorrela posted an 8-2 win over Ellie Downs.
“Satviki continued her awesome singles play by dominating her opponent from the very beginning,” Smith said. “She’s made some huge strides the last few weeks.”
Schmitz, meanwhile, rallied for an 8-6 victory over Kate Hauser.
“Sophie made a comeback in her singles match with everyone in the building watching,” Smith said. “She had to dig deep to win that one.”
Smith’s daughter produced two of the team’s victories in impressive fashion. Kira–an Iowa State recruit–rolled to an 8-0 win over Kennedy Feldman, then teamed up with Olivia North for another 8-0 triumph at No. 2 doubles.
“I think Kira really thrived in her future home, especially with some of her future coaches and teammates watching,” Smith said. “Despite that potential pressure, she absolutely crushed it not dropping a single game in her two matches. It was fun to see a glimpse of the future.”
Overall, though, Smith called it a disappointing day.
“The Ankeny Invitational is always one of my favorite meets every year because we give our seniors opportunities they don’t have otherwise with three separate dual meets,” he said. “We had planned to get a couple of our loyal JV seniors their first varsity doubles match and two of our varsity doubles players their first singles matches.
“It was a disappointing day all around with not being able to give our seniors the opportunities we had planned,” he added.
The Hawkettes will host a CIML Conference meet against Waukee Northwest (8-1) on Tuesday.
Here are the match-by-match results from Friday’s meet:
Marshalltown 7, Ankeny 4
Singles: Smith (A) beat Feldman, 8-0; Sandvick (M) beat Francel, 8-3; Schmitz (A) beat Hauser, 8-6; Zahnd (M) beat North, 8-4; Jensen (M) beat Hanley, 8-1; Gorrela (A) beat Downs, 8-2.
Doubles: Feldman-Sandvick (M) beat Francel-Schmitz, 8-5; Smith-North (A) beat Hauser-Zahnd, 8-0; Jensen-Downs (M) beat Gorrela-Quirk, 8-7; Hughes-Jones (M) beat Hanley-Dietrich, 8-0; Avise-Price (M) beat Johnson-Ventura, 8-4.