Year in and year out, the Edwardsville girls tennis team is among the top squads in southern Illinois. But coach Dave Lipe doesn't take the Tigers' success for granted.
Last year's highlights included a sectional championship and splitting the Southwestern Conference championship with Belleville West (the Tigers won the regular season, while West won the SWC tournament).
"That's 14 sectionals in a row and our second conference championship in a row, so it was a very good year for us," said Lipe, whose squad capped the season with a 32nd-place finish at the state tournament.
"We qualified both doubles teams and both singles players for state and we won 20 dual matches, which is a school record."
That's a lot to live up to, but Lipe feels the Tigers have the talent to be even better this year. Edwardsville lost three players to graduation, but only one of them, Maria Kovarik, was among the six girls that played at the state tournament.
"We also gained some players, so we are definitely a deep team," Lipe said. "In our first two conference matches, we played 16 different kids. We think that's important to keep kids interested and give them a chance to play."
Junior Morgan McGinnis returns at No. 1 singles with senior Tess Severin at No. 2. Severin plays No. 1 doubles with senior Jessica Burns.
Junior Paige Bequette, a returning state qualifier, is in the third singles spot with senior Paige Sturley, a three-time qualifier, at No. 4. Sturley and junior Casey Bonham are the No. 2 doubles team.
Burns is at No. 5 singles with freshman Megan Larose at No. 6. Beckett and McGinnis play No. 3 doubles. Rounding out the varsity roster are sophomore Jenn Meyer, juniors Kristin Schlueter and Sara Janulavich and freshman Mallory Abert.
"Our orange team, which is our second group, finished fifth out of 24 teams at our tournament (Sept. 2-3) and our varsity group won it," Lipe said. "I felt pretty good about that, but you're only as good as your next match.
"We finished seventh of 16 teams at New Trier the previous weekend, but the teams that finished ahead of us are top-10 teams in the state. I had no problem with our finish or our effort."
Lipe expects continued improvement from the Tigers, who are 11-3 in dual matches.
"We want to improvement our communication with the parents and the players and we want discipline overall in our program," Lipe said. "Other than that, we just want to have fun.
"We also want to get more focused as a team and we're doing some things to work toward that. We have a good team website that has words of the week on it.
"I talked to (former Edwardsville player) Jordan Leskera about his daily schedule at West Point and how they keep those kids focused. I don't think girls tennis should be like training the world's greatest military leaders, but there are some things that are similar."
